


Creeping Ivy

by ravenbringslight



Series: Author's favorites [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Banter, Dubious Consent, Falling In Love, Feelings Realization, Fertility god Thor, First Time, Fuck Or Die, Happy Ending, Humor, Jealous Thor (Marvel), Loki is full of shit, M/M, Magical Accidents, Magical Bond, NSFW Art, Pre-Thor (2011), Road Trips, Romance, Sex, Sex Pollen, Sibling Incest, Thor (Marvel) is Not Stupid, Trickster Loki, but like, but very light on the angst, it is sex pollen after all, it's kind of both?, just enough to sweeten everything else, korean translation available, less as a vehicle for dubcon and more as a vehicle for feelings, technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 13:02:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16409024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenbringslight/pseuds/ravenbringslight
Summary: Loki doesn't usually make errors involving spellcraft, but he does frequently make errors involving his brother. Today is no exception.akaWhat Happens When You Accidentally Throw A Fertility God Into The Middle Of A Complicated Magical Working





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story had me tearing my hair out multiple times. It actually started as an epic, bloated angst-fest, until I decided at the last minute to scrap nearly everything I'd written but the premise and start over from scratch. So this comes to you after two weeks of frenzied writing. Many many thanks to the people who held my hand while I screamed behind the scenes, most notably incredifishface/thebookhunter, darklittlestories, ark, and maharlika.
> 
> Thank you also to my big bang artist [pangaeastarseed](http://pangaeastarseed.tumblr.com/), who drew the most GORGEOUS art.
> 
> Also thank you to shineonloki, who drew [a lovely portrait](http://shineonloki.tumblr.com/post/179953816363/inspired-by-the-fic-creeping-ivy) of our boys.
> 
> May I also direct you to some [visual inspiration](https://thunderingraven.tumblr.com/post/179441304261/a-little-visual-inspiration-for-the-fic-im).
> 
> This fic is now also [available in Korean](https://lights-above.postype.com/category/%EC%9E%A5%ED%8E%B8-%EB%B2%88%EC%97%AD-34-creeping-ivy-34)!
> 
> You can come visit me at <http://raven-brings-light.tumblr.com> where I yell about thorki a lot.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

*  
*  
*

It took Loki six centuries to accidentally run across a spell in a musty old book that was supposed to harness the power of the stars to temporarily increase the caster’s power. One of those “year and a day” type things. _Interesting_ , he thought to himself, and mentally filed it away for later.

Another century before he serendipitously found a rare fungus in the woods of Alfheim while on a camping trip with his brother and realized that, without meaning to, he had collected nearly all the ingredients for the various potions needed.

Ten years to get the last ingredient, because that last one was a real pain in the ass and, really, what was the rush?

Five years off and on to brew them all.

A year to daydream about what he’d do with his newly quadrupled powers and wait for the proper star alignment.

A week to practice drawing the runes in the proper order with no mistakes.

A day to chalk them all over the floors, walls, and ceiling of his workroom.

An hour to double check his wards to make sure he wasn’t disturbed.

Half an hour to pace.

Fifteen minutes to re-tie his hair, stretch his limbs, bounce on his toes.

Five minutes to lament that time had never passed so slowly for anyone in all of history, ever.

Two breaths to close his eyes and begin.

Less than an instant for Thor to come in and fuck it all up.

*

After so many hundreds of years of honing his spellcraft, Loki rarely, if ever, made technical errors anymore. However, as was often the case in his life, he more than made up for it by constantly making errors involving his brother.

Error number one: Not bothering to close the “Thor exception” in his wards because Thor was supposed to be on a hunting trip with Sif. 

(Loki was never sure if these were hunting trips or “hunting trips,” but that was neither here nor there at the moment because—)

“Brother!” Thor said brightly, shoving the door open, clutching a package to his chest. “Look what I found on Nornheim! I know you’d been looking for one of these and I came back early to—surprise you—”

Loki was sitting on the floor of his lab in the middle of a series of concentric circles he’d drawn, or rather he would have been sitting if his ass had been on the floor rather than floating three inches above it. He whipped around, startled nearly out of his skin, and thumped to the ground. The spell had been going off perfectly, the celestial vibrations singing around him, just starting to be harnessed and contained by his working. Thor stepping into it felt like a boulder being thrown into a pond. It disoriented Loki for a moment, made his head spin, and he felt the power he was manipulating start to slip out of his grasp.

“Get out!” Loki snapped.

“What—”

Error number two: Loki tried to shove Thor back out the door with a blast of seidr.

Thor didn’t budge an inch, but every inscribed rune in the room flared gold. Loki was fairly certain that was not supposed to happen.

Loki rose from the ground and stepped out of the circles. “You’re fucking everything up!”

Error number three: Grabbing onto Thor’s arm while still holding onto the energy he had been trying to direct into himself.

Loki felt the moment their magics connected, and from the way he stiffened Thor did as well. The package that Thor had been holding fell from his hands.

“Loki?”

Thor’s veins had begun to glow under his skin, mapping out his body in eerie golden script. He looked down at himself and then back up, and his eyes were glowing too. Loki brought his hand up in front of his face. He stared in consternation at his own veins, which were glowing silver to Thor’s gold.

He spared a small distant corner of his mind to scoff at the fact that they were _clearly_ lighting up the wrong colors, Thor should be silver and Loki should be gold—

“AAaagh,” Loki said at the same moment that Thor made a noise that sounded something like a cross between a gurgle and the yelp of a kicked puppy. The celestial vibrations had changed pitch and frequency and were now funneling _into_ them...just the way they were supposed to according to the spell...well, they were supposed to be flowing into _Loki_ , not into _Loki and Thor_...

It was amazing. Incandescent. Loki felt the entire power of the cosmos surge through him for a brief second. For that instant he was connected to Thor in a way he never had been before—their hearts beat in tandem, and they were one, and they were everything, and everything was them. And then the power was gone, a remnant of it staying behind and settling into their vibrating bones.

And Loki fainted.

*

Loki gasped when he came awake, and tried to roll over, but something stopped him.

Thor.

Specifically, Thor’s hand.

More specifically, Thor’s hand holding Loki’s hand, their fingers laced together.

Thor was face down, still unconscious, and Loki ripped his hand free of his brother’s grasp.

“Thor,” Loki croaked. “Thor.” Trying to sit up proved fruitless, and he fell back on his elbows. He felt as shaky as a newborn colt. He grabbed Thor’s shoulder and shook it.

“Thor, you idiot, wake up.”

“‘M’awake,” Thor muttered, batting at Loki’s hand. “Get off me.”

Thor rolled over and dragged a hand across his face. He managed to sit up right away, the bastard.

“What happened?” he asked groggily.

Loki couldn’t keep the peevishness out of his voice. “ _You_ happened.”

“Oh shit, was this that thing?” Thor said. “The thing you’re been so squirrelly about?”

“ _Squirrelly_ —what are you even—UGH. Yes. This was _that thing_ ,” Loki snapped. “I’ve only been planning it for years.”

“I didn’t realize it was last night.”

“ _Obviously_.”

Thor heaved himself to his feet and Loki finally managed to get his ass underneath him so that he was sitting upright. Had Thor always looked quite so...tall? And...broad?

“This is quite the fuck-up you’ve managed,” Loki said. “I don’t even know what happened.”

“That _I’ve_ managed?” Thor said. “All I did was walk in the room! Why didn’t you lock the door if it was so important?”

Loki made a noise of disgust and managed to stagger to his feet himself. “You are the only person who could even open that door and you were supposed to be _gone_. Why weren’t you gone, anyway?”

“We’d taken down a fire wyrm,” Thor said, “and I managed to get its heartstone. I thought you’d be pleased to have one.”

Typical. Loki exhaled shakily. At any other time he would have been absolutely thrilled to get a fire wyrm’s heartstone. He’d been lusting after one for a century at the least, but they were exceedingly hard to get ahold of. He had no idea that Thor had been paying attention like that. Trust his sweet fool of a brother to turn a thoughtful gift into a mess like this.

“Oh,” was all that Loki said.

“A ‘thank you’ might be nice,” Thor muttered.

“An ‘I’m sorry’ might be nice,” Loki shot right back.

They gave each other the stink eye for a moment. Loki bent down to scoop the package containing the heartstone off the floor where it had fallen, and when he came back up Thor was looking at his hands, turning them this way and that, and frowning.

“What happened to us?” Thor asked.

*

It was a mark of how much Loki cared for his brother (and, also, how concerned he was about whatever had gone on during the spell) that he elected to sit down with him instead of running off immediately to test out his magic. They absconded to Loki’s study, which was connected to the workroom by a (very) heavy iron-banded wooden door, and cracked open two bottles of wine, and Loki started explaining.

He was sure he’d told Thor about most of this at some point over the years. Maybe it had simply dribbled out of his ears like so many other things; Loki had always had a mental image of Thor’s muscles growing so large that they squeezed the thoughts out of his brain, and he liked to amuse himself with it when he felt like Thor was being particularly dense.

So Loki told Thor all over again. He told him about the spell and how it was supposed to increase his own powers for a year and a day (a quaint length of time, Loki thought), and Thor kept interrupting to ask questions, and at any other time Loki was sure he’d be severely annoyed by it, but instead he found himself oddly distracted by Thor’s proximity instead. Of how close they were sitting together on Loki’s couch. Of how he could feel the heat of Thor’s body radiating off of him.

“So anyway,” Loki said. He stared into his cup, which was empty except for the drops clinging to the sides. He felt a bit lightheaded. Surely from the wine. “Obviously you got included in the spell too. It won’t be so bad to have a little extra lightning for the next year, right? I’m just hoping that’s all that happened. Because—”

“Because we connected.”

Loki sighed.

“You felt it too?”

“I did.”

Loki shivered a little as he remembered the song of the heavens singing through them together, and briefly thought again about how they had been glowing the opposite colors that their magics usually were, and he tipped the last drop of wine into his mouth. “What is that godsawful noise?” he said.

His study was mostly floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, but there was one leaded window to let in some natural light. And that window had a very wide sill, large enough to set books on, say, or potted plants, both of which littered the inside bit. Or even a pair of fat squirrels, which were currently taking up residence on the outside bit, and making the strangest noises, and knocking against the glass, because—

“I think somebody just found a mate,” Thor said, laughing.

“Are there honestly rodents _fucking_ in my window?” Loki said incredulously. “They must be diseased, it’s not even mating season.”

He rose and pounded on the window until they ran off. When he turned back, Thor had tipped his head back to rest on the back of the couch, and the long line of his throat was exposed. His eyes were closed and his cheeks looked flushed. Maybe the wine had gotten to him too. They had just had an ordeal, after all.

“You’re not falling asleep, are you?” Loki said. “Because I want to do some tests, see if I can figure out what, if anything, has happened to us—”

Thor only made a noncommittal noise and flapped his hand.

“Do you need some water?” Loki asked irritably.

“‘M’alright,” Thor said. “Just a little...a little…”

Loki came around to sit back on the couch and paused halfway down. His eyes widened to the size of dinner plates.

“Thor,” Loki said, very carefully. “Why do you have an erection?”

Erection was maybe an understatement. Thor’s head shot up and he looked down at his own lap with alarm, then scrambled to grab a pillow to cover himself with.

It came to Loki in a flash. His spell had been to augment _all_ powers, and Thor wasn’t just a storm god. He was also a fertility god.

“Up!” Loki demanded. “Get off my couch this instant.”

Thor leaped to his feet, still clutching the pillow to himself, and he looked so ridiculous standing there, like a youth who’d been caught having a wank, that Loki was hard pressed not to burst out laughing.

“I’m sorry,” Thor started babbling, “I don’t know why...sorry…”

Loki did start laughing then. It was all so ridiculous. Utilizing the harmony of the celestial spheres and harnessing the very essence of the stars to distill it down into _boner magic_.

“I hope you’re enjoying your new…’powers’...” Loki wheezed.

“Oh, gods,” Thor groaned.

“Get out of here,” Loki said, waving. “Go take care of that.”

Thor was fairly dancing in place, his cheeks flaming red.

“Are you sure?”

Loki could barely breathe through his mirth.

“Well I can’t very well talk to you when you’re like _that_. I’ll be here when you get back.”

*

Seizing the opportunity presented while Thor was otherwise occupied, Loki went back into his workroom and started flexing his seidr. It was glorious. Like drinking from the freshest, cleanest waterfall, where before he had been sticking his face under a tap. He cleaned the entire room and set it to rights with a wave of his hand. Then, just for fun, he turned everything in it blue. Then yellow. Then rainbow colored. Not an illusion; he actually changed the colors of the physical objects.

He grinned. Oh, this was going to open up _so many possibilities_ for him. He already had a list of things he’d like to accomplish in the next year, and he was itching to get out and start doing them. Maybe he’d even let Thor tag along.

Where was Thor, anyway? How long could it possibly take to rub one out?

Loki felt a restless tug in his chest at the thought of Thor. A faint insistence. _He’s that way_ , it seemed to say. _Right over there. Go to him. Go._

Loki grimaced and rubbed at his breastbone, as though he could banish the feeling. Was this from the spell?

He went back out into his study, intending to grab a book and try to quiet whatever this feeling was. His attention was drawn by the potted devil’s ivy he had on the windowsill though, and he frowned. It looked markedly bigger than it had earlier. And then, right under his very eyes, it suddenly grew five inches. Loki, blinked, very rapidly. He snatched up a random book and flipped open to a random page and tried to ignore the feeling in his chest.

The feeling wouldn’t let up, however, and it was so distracting that Loki couldn’t concentrate. He got up and paced around his study once, twice, thrice. He felt a tingle at the back of his neck.

_Go to him_.

Before he knew what he was doing, Loki was out the door, through his apartments, into the hallway, and raising his hand to knock on Thor’s door.

Thor opened it first.

He was disheveled looking. Glassy eyed. Still flushed. He had tossed a dressing gown on haphazardly and tied it sloppily at the waist, and the tent in the front of it left absolutely nothing to the imagination.

“I thought you were supposed to be taking care of that,” Loki said. Not breathlessly. No. Just. Concernedly.

Thor’s eyes locked onto his. They were so very blue and his lashes were so very dark and the way he was looking at Loki was so very hungry. Loki swallowed past a sudden lump in his throat.

“I tried,” Thor said. “Three times.”

“Obviously you didn’t try hard enough.”

“Hah hah,” Thor said, and then he was drawing Loki into the room and shutting the door behind him. Was his hand always so warm? Loki was just opening his mouth to say something annoying, but then he got a look at Thor’s sitting room and all the sarcasm dried up in his throat.

“Wow,” was all he managed to say. Thor’s sitting room didn’t look like a room at all, but a leafy green cave. Ivy and honeysuckle from the outside had grown in through the window, breaking it, and climbed down to the floor and up across ceiling. Flowers were opening all along it even as Loki watched.

Thor gestured around. “If this is what augmenting my powers means, then take them back. I don’t want them.”

“Sorry,” Loki said. He watched Thor move restlessly around the room. Prowling like some huge cat. The air felt charged, and knowing his brother that might actually be literally. “Feel free to go back in time and _not_ enter my workroom at the height of a complicated spell.”

Thor glared at him. Loki glared back. That feeling in his chest had him squirming and he fought to hold still. He was starting to picture it like a gremlin, laughing as it directed him this way and that.

“Maybe you need to fuck someone,” Loki suggested. Quite helpfully, he thought.

Thor growled and hit his thigh.

“Not just _someone_ ,” he said roughly, his tone and his eyes making his meaning plain, and Loki’s stomach did a flip. He was suddenly very sorry that he had laughed at Thor’s predicament earlier.

“Ah,” Loki said. No point in beating around the bush. “It’s me, isn’t it? You have to fuck me.” He felt the rightness of the words as soon as he said them. His chest gremlin hummed its approval.

“I was hoping,” Thor said, “that maybe you could do some of your—you know—” he wiggled his fingers “—and tell me that I am very wrong indeed.”

Normally Loki would snipe at Thor for referring to his magic with finger wiggling, but nothing about this situation was normal. He felt a bit faint, actually; he'd already passed out once today, though, and his body didn't do him the favor of letting it happen again. A sort of calm stole over him, that odd peace that tended to accompany utter certainty. He already knew what he would find. But he nodded anyway, and closed his eyes to better probe at their magic with his witchsight. He had to try at least. Even he was wrong every once in awhile.

He should probably have done this from the start when they first woke up. In his defense, he had likely been in shock. He might still be in shock, actually.

Their magic was all there. The green-gold wash of Loki's seidr, brighter than it had ever been. The blue twist of lightning under Thor's skin. Thor’s fertility magic, usually wisps of silver that clung gently to him like the questing tendrils of ivy, now grown into vines as thick as Loki's wrist and twining all around him, and so bright that Loki could hardly look at them. And there...

Loki was silent for a long moment.

The connection between them was beautiful, actually. A thin braided filament, sparkling and jewel-bright. There was a strand each of seidr and lightning and life—he and his brother, entwined at the aetherial level. It filled him with a sweet sort of sadness, for some reason. 

“I wish you could see this,” Loki said. “It’s lovely.”

“Loki. _Am I wrong?_ ”

“Hold on.”

Loki followed each strand. He found where they originated and how they connected and where they terminated. Then he did it again. He was just stalling, though. He knew already, had known since that first tug in his chest that had sent him from his room. It was somewhat of a comfort to see it confirmed, though.

“You're not wrong.”

Loki came back to himself with a shake of his head and Thor cursed and sat down hard on a chair. The intensity seemed to go out of him and he looked a bit lost.

“What will happen if we don't do it?” Thor asked.

“I don't know exactly, but I can guess. You’ll be in a constant...state, and nothing will be able to sate you, not yourself, not others. And you’ll start to go mindless with it. You’ll turn into a rutting beast, trying to fuck anything that moves. And still nothing will sate you. You’ll be quite mad by that point. And then you’ll probably die.”

Thor's eyebrows climbed into his hair.

“Die? From what? Unemptied balls? That’s hardly a cause of death.”

“ _Thor_ ,” Loki said exasperatedly, “didn’t you just empty them _three times_? Did it help at all?”

Loki looked at him with his eyebrow raised like _’well?’_ and Thor rolled his eyes and huffed.

“You’ll die from pent up magic, not pent up semen,” Loki continued. “I examined it from every angle. You’re a constantly regenerating source of fertility magic right now, and it simply needs some way to get _out_.”

“And it will get out...by fucking…”

“It will get out through me. I was the one who cast the augmentation spell, and it wants to come out through me. Because of the link. Think of it like...you’re a room with one door in it, and the door leads to another room—”

“Which is you—”

“Yes, which is me. And then I have another door to the outside.”

“Can’t I just break a window?” Thor asked.

“Arrrrgh,” Loki groaned. “It’s not a perfect metaphor, alright? There are no windows. Just me, and you, and—”

“Undo the spell then!” Thor said, cutting him off. He was starting to sound agitated, and the flush was working down his neck all the way to his chest, and his breathing was labored. “Having a little extra magic can’t be worth this.”

“I don’t think I can,” Loki said. “It was a one-way working. It’s going to wear off on its own in a year and a day, but until then…”

“What about getting my magic out some other way?” Thor asked. “Fucking can’t be the only way to do it.”

“It’s _fertility magic_ ,” Loki said. “Of course it’s the only way. Don’t you know how fertility magic works?”

“Not...specifically!”

“If you paid attention in lessons for even five minutes—” Loki started, but stopped when Thor groaned and doubled over in the chair. “Are you alright?”

“I need…”

Thor looked back up at him and his pupils were blown wide. He trembled slightly. Sweat matted his hair to his forehead. He reached for Loki with one hand, then clenched it into a fist and hit his own thigh instead. Warily, Loki looked upon him with his witchsight again.

“Sweet Adumla,” he said. “How are you even upright?” Over the course of their conversation, the glow of Thor’s magic had gone from ‘campfire,’ straight past ‘forest fire,’ and was now hovering somewhere around ‘plasma.’

“You should leave,” Thor ground out. “Before I—”

“Haven’t you been listening?” Loki snapped. Being so close to Thor’s magic was starting to overwhelm him. And he was still riding a little high on the beauty of their connection, and he still had that gremlin in his chest, its sharp little hooks pulling at him, and it was chanting _Thor, Thor, Thor_ , and it was very insistent and very convincing. And it was making Loki feel very flushed himself, and like his collar was too tight. “Believe it or not, I don’t actually want you to go mad, or die, or both,” Loki said, then couldn’t resist adding, “Besides, I think maybe you’ll owe me quite a large favor after this.”

“Do you really know...what you’re telling me to do?”

Loki snorted. “Believe it or not I do know what fucking entails. I’m a misanthrope, not a monk. I’ve been told I’m quite a good lay, actually—”

Thor hid his face in his hands and groaned.

“Do you want to fuck me?” Loki asked.

Thor huffed out a high little laugh, but there was an edge to his voice when he said, “I want to fuck the entire palace into the ground.”

“But do you want to fuck _me_?”

Thor spoke his answer into the floor. “Yes.”

“A little louder, I couldn’t quite make that out.”

Thor looked up at him and glared. Glaring was quite a bit better than moping at the floor.

“ _Yes_ ,” Thor growled. “I want to fuck you.”

The roughness of Thor’s voice carved a path straight to Loki’s middle and made him shiver. “Alright then,” Loki said, beginning to untie his tunic before he could think better of it. He had no idea what he was doing. How could he have accepted this turn of events so quickly? This was madness.

“ _Gods_ ,” Thor said, “Loki, please…” He rose to his feet and swayed for a moment. Loki reached a hand out to steady him, but Thor waved him off violently. “If you don’t touch me, you can still leave. If you do…”

“I know,” Loki said softly. “But if you think I’m going to leave you right now you’re even more of a fool than I’ve ever taken you for.”

Slowly, Loki reached for Thor’s hand. The instant they touched Thor’s arms were around him, pulling him into a crushing embrace, and Thor buried his face in Loki’s neck and inhaled deeply. A shudder passed through both of them. Thor pulled back and his hands closed around Loki’s upper arms. Loki had never been more aware of the two inches of height that Thor had on him, and he raised his chin. Thor shook him gently. They couldn’t tear their eyes away from each other. Thor’s gaze was like a predator locked onto its prey, and Loki suddenly had an inkling that at the moment he was distinctly prey-shaped.

Their link flared, and hunger resonated between them.

“Oh my,” Loki said involuntarily, in the tiniest voice he’d ever heard come out of himself.

“Are you _absolutely fucking sure_ ,” Thor all but growled at him.

Loki mustered up all his courage and put his hand flat on Thor’s chest, right on the V of skin exposed by his robe. He could feel Thor’s heart thundering.

He let his face and voice be completely serious for once when he said, “You feel it in here, don’t you?”

Thor covered Loki’s hand with his own and squeezed.

“I do.”

They shared a wide-eyed look for a moment, and then Thor had his wrist in an iron grip and was pulling him into the bedroom.

“O-o-ooh,” Loki said as a breathless laugh escaped him. “Eager now, are we?”

Thor rolled his eyes and dragged Loki over to the bed. Loki’s tunic was hanging open off his shoulders, his thin chest exposed, and Thor’s dressing robe was not doing much of anything to cover up what was going on underneath it. The scrap of fabric was making a valiant effort, but it could do little to conceal the vast expanse of Thor’s chest and thighs, or the length of his still-hard cock.

Loki had always known that his brother was beautiful. It was impossible not to. But right now, inches away from him and with his breath quickening in his lungs, he was feeling it in a very visceral way that had heretofore been undiscovered.

Thor pulled him in close again when they reached the bed, one hand on his neck and the other on his ass, and Loki gasped. The sheer physicality of Thor’s entire huge hot body pressed against him was shocking, no matter how much he’d been expecting it. Thor’s entire huge hot erection was pressed up against him too, and grinding into the crease between his leg and his groin, and ok, that was a new sensation. A _very_ new sensation.

“That must be getting terribly painful,” Loki said. He’d always had a terrible habit of covering up nerves with sarcasm. Thor growled and ground into him harder.

A thousand possibilities for what happened next ran through Loki’s mind. Would they caress each other tenderly, like lovers? Rut quickly, like animals? Struggle for dominance like enemies on a battlefield? Try to enjoy themselves, or just close their eyes and get it over with?

In the end they proceeded as they always had, which was not as lovers or as adversaries, but as brothers.

“Your beard is scratchy,” Loki complained when Thor bore him backwards onto the bed and buried his face in his neck, and “Do you ever cut your fingernails?” when Thor’s nail snagged on the fine silk of Loki’s tunic, and “Come on, you great oaf, I haven’t got all day,” when Thor paused at the lacing of his breeches.

“Please, keep talking, your commentary is not at all distracting,” Thor said, ripping the laces off completely with one swift yank.

“That’s the, _oof_ , point,” Loki grunted as Thor grabbed him by the hips and yanked him a foot closer down the bed. “We wouldn’t want this to be _weird_ or anything.”

Thor paused and drew back for a second, and their eyes met, and Loki’s mouth started twitching, and Thor’s did too. And then they were both laughing, cackling even. Clinging to each other and laughing so hard that they had tears in their eyes. 

“Oh gods,” Loki choked out. “Can you imagine. Us in a thousand years going ‘Haha brother, remember that one time our magic went haywire and we had to fuck?’”

“Loki, Loki, Loki,” Thor half laughed, half groaned, collapsing over Loki’s body and nosing into his neck again. “Gods. I’m losing my mind. I need you...I need to be in—” He cut himself off, but his words sent an electric zap down Loki’s spine all the same. To hear Thor’s voice saying words like _that_...

Loki’s tunic made it to the floor, and his breeches too, and it wasn’t as though he had never been naked in front of Thor before, but this was different. Wildly so. He felt himself start to blush, and was suddenly acutely aware of how scrawny he looked compared to...almost anyone else. Certainly Thor himself.

Thor tore his own robe off and Loki’s mouth went dry. 

His brother really did look like a statue. Like someone had handed the finest sculptor in the realm a block of the finest material and said, “Here, do your best work.” And then, not content to simply carve a body the envy of every breathing thing, that rotten sculptor had topped it off with a face to make the gods weep.

The living breathing statue bent over to get some oil out of the nightstand and, fighting for some small scrap of appearing to have a handle on the situation, Loki scoffed.

“You keep oil right next to the bed? Cocky, aren’t you?”

Loki’s temporary false bravado left him when Thor crawled up and planted his knees on either side of Loki’s hips and his hands on either side of Loki’s face, and he looked down at Loki and Loki looked back up at him and they both swallowed.

“If you stab me right now you can still probably get away,” Thor said, his voice low and husky.

“Why would I stab you?” Loki managed, only squeaking a little bit.

“Once you stabbed me just for picking you up.”

“You surprised me is all!”

“Uh huh,” Thor said, and let one hand trail down Loki’s chest. Goosebumps erupted all over Loki’s body. Thor was looking at him with the oddest expression on his face and Loki couldn’t read it at all. It was extraordinarily troubling. Loki thought he knew all of Thor’s expressions.

Thor’s hand nudged Loki’s legs apart then slid up his thigh, squeezing when he got to the top. His finger nudged against Loki’s entrance and Loki sucked in a breath. They couldn’t look away from each other. The very tip of Thor’s finger pressed in and Loki clutched at Thor’s arms, his eyes wide.

This was absolutely, positively, without a single doubt, the most surreal thing that Loki had ever experienced. Maybe he was actually on Alfheim and he’d eaten some mushrooms. That made more sense than what was going on.

“Am I surprising you now?” Thor asked.

“Do you _want_ me to stab you? Because that can absolutely be arranged.”

Thor didn’t rise to the bait. His eyes were so intense and Loki couldn’t tear himself away from them. It made his chest feel strange. Probably just that stupid chest gremlin.

“It’s just the spell. And it’s just sex,” Loki whispered, to comfort both of them. “Just a bodily function, just things that bodies do. Hormones. That’s all. Nothing to it.”

“Nothing to it.”

He closed his eyes. Felt Thor’s hands on his hips, sliding down to his ass. Parting his cheeks. He sucked in a breath. A trickle of oil, a pressure at his entrance, and then—

“ _Ohh_ ,” Loki groaned in spite of himself.

Thor froze.

“Did I hurt you?”

“My darling brother, I have been fucked by things far larger than your index finger. Please, don’t stop on account of a little noise.”

“This is probably the spell, but I suddenly find myself wanting to find anyone who has ever fucked you and smash their heads in myself.”

“Ah,” Loki said sagely, which was all he could manage, because Thor’s finger had just found his prostate and sent a tingling wave of pleasure through his entire body. He didn’t really get to ruminate on it either, because Thor was adding another finger now, and Loki’s brain was stuck in a loop of “Thor—fingers—ass—good”, and getting hung up on the “good”, because this was _Thor_ , and then repeating.

“I am...restraining myself,” Thor said, his voice rough. “Greatly. Right now.”

“Noted and appreciated,” Loki said. “My bottom thanks you wholeheartedly.”

Just then, their link flared to life. “Nnn,” Loki said, and “Hhh,” Thor said, and a great swell of lust connected them, and it washed away Loki’s snark and Thor’s hesitation, and before either of them knew what was happening (Loki knew that Thor didn’t know, because he _was_ Thor, currently, and Thor had _no fucking clue_ ), Thor had seated himself inside Loki with one prolonged thrust and begun moving.

“Oh my,” Loki said, about two octaves higher than usual. That was Thor’s cock, right there, inside him. Thor’s cock, dragging out and back in, about two miles in each direction. 

“ _Gods_ ,” Thor groaned. “Are you ok—Ymir’s blood, you feel so good, I— _ahhhh_ —”

“This is fine,” Loki wheezed. There wasn’t really any room for air in his body. His brother’s magnificent cock was currently taking up all the available real estate. “Has anyone ever told you that you have entirely more cock than is necessary?”

“I may have— _hhh_ —heard that a time or two.”

“Oh you insufferable arse. You’re not supposed to admit it.”

Thor thrust in particularly forcefully and Loki moaned. He’d meant to do that. Obviously. He was just trying to make Thor feel better about this whole thing.

“Right there,” Loki said breathlessly. He’d meant to say that too.

Thor picked up the pace, and he was brushing over Loki’s sweet spot repeatedly now, and they were both grabbing at each other. Thor rose up to his knees and closed his hands around Loki’s thighs. Loki stared open-mouthed and frazzled at the vision in front of him. His brother, naked and covered in sweat, chest heaving, hair wild, eyes burning, making the most indecent noises, and Loki’s _own naked legs_ hiked up to rest on those stupidly broad shoulders. And it felt good. It felt _so good_.

Of course it did. Bodies. Sex. Loki had said so himself, hadn’t he? It was just...hormones...and magic…

Thor’s hands were wrapped around Loki’s waist now and his thumbs dug into Loki’s hips, and it almost hurt, almost, but it was the good kind. The kind that spoke of the desperation of want, not of the desire to inflict pain. Loki found himself wrapping his own hands around Thor’s arms and squeezing hard. Loki’s chest felt tight, and his heart felt just a little too big for his ribcage.

“Thor,” Loki gasped out. Thor had begun glowing. His veins were lighting up under his skin, a branching network of gold. The glow intensified, and took on a silver cast. Thor was slamming into him now, and they each grunted with the force of his impact. Loki took one of Thor’s hands and pressed it to his cheek, turned his face into it, seeking...he didn’t know what he was seeking. Something he didn’t know the name of yet. 

Their link flared again, opening them up to each other, and Thor spilled inside him with a harsh cry.

Energy poured out of Thor and into Loki, coursing through his veins, lighting him up too, and he was filled to bursting with sunlight and abundance; with tender green shoots pushing out of the fertile earth, and the unfurling buds of spring; with ripe golden wheat and apples heavy on the branch; with the warmth of desire and the ecstasy of its fulfillment; with the fluttering of a thousand wings lifted in the joy of flight—all of them the many voices of _life_ , raised in a radiant song of thanks for itself.

Loki cried out as well, joining the chorus, his voice a perfect echo of Thor’s, and then the wave of Thor’s magic rolled through him and _out_ and left them both open-mouthed and breathless.

They held onto each other with trembling limbs until the glow faded. Until they were once again simply Thor and Loki.

“Well,” Loki said finally. “That was interesting.”

He’d always prided himself on his talent for understatement.

Thor huffed a little laugh and rolled off of him and they laid side by side with their hands folded on their stomachs. Loki felt completely deflated and wrung out, like a sad pathetic wine skin with no wine in it, and he was a little mortified at the overwrought sincerity of feeling that Thor’s magic had evoked in him. He swore to himself never to speak of it, lest Thor mock him relentlessly. As they lay there, their eyes wandered up to the ceiling and Loki heard Thor’s breath leave him all in a rush.

“Huh,” Loki said.

The four posters of Thor’s bed had become living cherry trees. They’d thickened and grown bark and roots that pushed between the flagstones of the floor, and branches that tangled together on the ceiling over the bed. Each branch was frosted in thousands of blossoms, and the entire canopy danced with butterflies and honeybees. It was, no matter how Loki tried to spin it, beautiful.

Loki was transfixed by what was going on overhead and so he jumped when Thor reached out and touched his hair unexpectedly.

“Sorry,” they both said awkwardly at the same time, then Thor said, “it’s just—” He gestured at Loki’s head.

Loki felt his hair for himself and to his surprise found that it was curling well past his shoulders. It must have grown half a foot at the least.

“Oh,” Loki said.

“I’ll ah...I’ll get us some rags.”

Thor fairly scurried to the bath, and when he came back he tossed a cloth to Loki from five feet away and didn’t meet his eyes. Loki sighed. It was going to be absolutely insufferable if this was how Thor was going to be from now on.

“Don’t turn into an idiot,” Loki said.

“What?”

“Don’t turn into even more of an idiot than you already are,” Loki amended. “You do not get to fuck me and then start acting all weird around me or avoiding me. We’re in this together now.”

Thor sat down heavily on the side of the bed.

“I still can’t quite believe you’re not trying to kill me right now,” Thor said. “Or turn me into a frog again.”

“I’m as surprised as anyone,” Loki said. “Don’t press your luck.”

They were quiet for a moment, both of them staring at the living canopy above them and lost in their own thoughts.

“Do you think we’ll have to do this again?” Thor said.

“I guess we’ll find out.”


	2. Chapter 2

Loki attempted to keep himself very busy for the next week or so. It was an act of self-preservation, really. Yes, he did have a list of things he wanted to accomplish with his new powers, and yes he had been planning on being busy anyway, but any down time at all right now was downright dangerous.

Because every time his mind wasn’t occupied fully, thoroughly, and completely, all he could think about was his stupid brother.

Thor really didn’t merit this much of Loki’s attention, did he?

Of course he didn’t.

And yet Loki kept thinking about him. At all hours of the day. At _every_ hour of the day. It was tiresome. Loki didn’t even think about _himself_ that much, and usually he thought about himself far more than he thought about anyone else. It was incredibly irritating and Loki found himself annoyed at Thor even when Thor wasn’t around, for nothing that Thor had even done. He wasn’t forcing Loki to think about him. And yet—

Here Loki was, in his workroom six days after the fact, botching the same potion three times in a row because his attention kept wandering to the memory of Thor in that handkerchief he called a dressing gown. What kind of nerve did he have, anyway, wearing that like it was actual clothing and not just the merest suggestion of clothing? Loki should sneak into his room and replace everything in his wardrobe with full coverage sleeves and breeches… In loose flowing fabrics, nothing tight, nothing suggestive _at all_... Cover him up properly so that decent folks could get things done without being distracted by sculpted pectorals or biceps the size of melons, or gods forbid, those great, firm, muscular, thighs…

The smell of burning brought him back to reality and he cursed in five different languages as he doused the fire under his alembic. Gods fucking _damn_ it all to the deepest hells. He had been attempting to make a quadruple distillate of the perfect blue of a cloudless autumn sky captured on an equinox, musical wind from the aeolian plains, the heat of a newborn Muspelheim volcano, the breath of a basilisk, the sadness of a mother, and the glint of moonlight off a phoenix’s egg. That had been the absolute last bit of basilisk breath that he had, and he’d just wasted it all thinking about Thor’s _muscles_.

Maybe he’d make Thor get him some more. It seemed only fair.

Thor.

Back in Loki’s thoughts again.

Arrrgh.

And Loki had no idea what was going on in Thor’s head at all. After the...crisis...Loki had fixed Thor’s bed and gone back to his room and screamed into a pillow for awhile before falling into an exhausted sleep, and they hadn’t spoken of what had happened since then. Although, to Thor’s credit (loath though Loki was to give him any at all), he was trying to act normally, or at least as normally as could be expected. He didn’t change any of his habits or try to avoid Loki. He trained and attended council meetings and took dinner in the great hall and went out with his friends, and when their paths crossed he was almost completely himself. Maybe he looked at Loki a little harder than usual, or wasn’t quite as easy with his physical affections, but Loki wasn’t even sure he’d have noticed if he wasn’t looking for it. 

Loki tried to act normally as well.

He wasn’t sure why exactly they were pretending that nothing at all had happened, but it seemed like the most reasonable of a list of increasingly upsetting options, so he supposed they were just trying to make the best of it. Gods forbid they should actually talk about it. Loki couldn’t think of anything more excruciating.

What Loki should probably do was grab his Increased Powers To-Do List and go. Except, despite his equivocal words to Thor, Loki was reasonably certain that they _would_ have to do It again. He just didn’t know when, exactly, It would happen and he hadn’t wanted to alarm Thor with the possibility. He was already alarmed enough himself; he didn’t need to add the emotional burden of having to comfort Thor on top of it.

Loki sighed and cleaned up the charred mess he’d made with a lazy wave of his hand. Oh, he was going to miss this level of power once it ran out. Normally, what he’d just done would have required more magical effort than it was worth and he’d simply have cleaned everything by hand. He was spoiling himself.

What was Thor doing with his new powers anyway? Making more squirrels fuck?

This whole thing was so incredibly bizarre. And one thing Loki kept coming back to, the thing that he was really trying to distract himself from (with work and also with silly daydreams of Thor’s muscles, because at least those were just silly) was that Loki kept feeling like maybe, _possibly_ , when it became apparent that he was going to have to let his brother fuck him, he should have put up more of a fight. Why hadn’t he?

Sure, Thor’s life had been in danger, _in theory_ , but Thor regularly put his life in danger of his own volition all the damn time; if it was really Thor’s life that Loki cared about he’d either lock him in a cage or glue himself to Thor’s ass and never let Thor do anything alone, ever, lest Loki wasn’t there to jump between him and death.

Thor’s sanity had been in jeopardy too, but honestly—Loki had been questioning Thor’s sanity since they were toddlers and Thor went around hugging venomous animals like they were fluffy puppies. He wasn’t sure there would be a marked difference.

And ok, Thor wasn’t bad-looking, but… Lots of people had good-looking siblings and weren’t champing at the bit to jump into bed with them. Just because Loki happened to have the actual best-looking sibling, objectively, in all of existence didn’t excuse it.

And yes, Thor was kind and generous and good, but he was also, again objectively, the most irritating person in all of existence and an oaf besides. Those were just cold hard facts. Indisputable.

And of course Loki loved him. That wasn’t even up for debate. And of course Thor loved Loki. Again, not up for debate. They always had, but it had never led to fucking before. 

So what was the deal, then? Why had Loki basically hopped into his bed with a shrug and an ‘oh well, guess we have to fuck now’?

It must be the spell. That was the only explanation.

The gremlin in Loki’s chest gave a tumbling thump and Loki swore that if he could see it, it would be frowning.

*

The night that it happened again, Loki came back to his rooms after dinner to find that Thor had beaten him there. He was standing in Loki’s study staring at one of the bookshelves intently, hands clasped behind his back, and the potted devil’s ivy plant in the window nearest to him had grown all the way down to the floor and was beginning to snake little curly tendrils out into Loki’s expensive rug.

Loki was sure his face had just gone through about five different expressions in his surprise, but luckily Thor had has back to him and didn’t see any of them. He pulled himself together and put his hands on his hips.

“If you keep abusing your guest right like this I may have to rethink the ‘Thor exception’ in my wards,” Loki said. “Honestly, with all the trouble you cause me I don’t know why I haven’t banned you permanently yet.”

“Good evening to you, too, brother,” Thor said. He turned halfway to give Loki a guarded smile, which turned into a real smile when he saw that Loki hadn’t materialized any knives to stab him with. “Have you been well?”

Loki snorted. “Passably. Not that you’d know. You haven’t exactly been beating my door down.”

“You haven’t been beating mine down either,” Thor pointed out, entirely unreasonably in Loki’s opinion. He turned back towards the bookshelf and crossed his arms in front instead of behind.

“Are you here for any particular reason? Or just to grace me with the gift of your company? And why do you keep staring at my books?”

Thor sighed and his shoulders slumped slightly.

“Don’t be angry,” he said.

“Well I wasn’t before, but when you lead with _that_ —”

Grimacing, Thor turned all the way around to face Loki full on. Loki could see the flush of his cheeks now, and the slight glassiness of his eyes, and his ridiculous cock tenting his ridiculous breeches. Honestly, why Thor even wore breeches so tight Loki had no idea...surely they restricted his range of motion…

“I have a bit of a. Predicament,” Thor said. Apologetically. For some reason the tone irritated Loki out of all proportion. As if Thor had come to him like, _‘Hello brother, it’s that time again, terribly sorry, shall I take you from the front or from behind?’_

“Yes, we knew that you would, didn’t we,” Loki said flatly.

“Actually, I think you said ‘I guess we’ll find out’—”

Shaking his head, Loki cut Thor off with a hand gesture. He was starting to feel a bit lightheaded, and a bit tingly, and a bit like he wanted Thor to put his hands all over his body again. None of which was particularly acceptable, so he did what he’d always done best, and covered it up with annoyance.

“Come on, then,” Loki snapped, going to push past Thor and stomp into the bedroom.

Thor caught his arm and stopped him.

“Brother,” Thor said, catching Loki’s eyes, forcing Loki to look into their concerned depths. “I’m sorry.” Loki opened his mouth to tell Thor where, exactly, he could stick his ‘sorries’, but Thor ran right over him. “None of this is fair to you, and I realize now I’ve been selfish in keeping to myself for the past week. I just thought that perhaps...you might not want to be around me.”

Thor hand was so warm on Loki’s arm, and his words so unexpected, that Loki found himself startled into sincerity.

“You might try asking me what I want instead of assuming,” Loki said, his voice softening from the sharp sarcastic tones he’d had before. “And...I just hadn’t expected it to be so soon. Or tonight.”

Their link chose that moment to flare. An aching tenderness washed back and forth between them and left Loki dizzy. He wanted to stay annoyed, because annoyance was safe, but he felt it dissolving away under the strength of the feeling in him now. Thor touched Loki’s cheek and they both swayed.

“Please,” Thor said. “I need you.”

It was alarming, really, how such a few simple words that Loki had never even imagined hearing fed his heart so well. Like he had been starving before, and didn’t even realize it until he was offered a scrap of bread.

“I’m here,” Loki said.

They ended up in Loki’s bed. Naked Thor turned out to be just as glorious as Loki had been remembering all week; naked Loki just as scrawny and self-conscious. Somehow the first time had been easier, though. It had seemed almost a joke then, a bit of an adventure, something that they could write off as a mishap and just get on with their lives. It didn’t feel like a joke this time. It felt awkward, and like they were trying to hold themselves back from each other.

It wasn’t surprising, really. This wasn’t a romance, nor was it even sex simply for the sake of lust. It was a transaction. Something that had to be completed so that Thor didn’t die. The only required action was Thor’s climax. Kisses, touching for the sake of touching, intimacy, even simply Loki climaxing as well—all the pleasures of the flesh that partners both romantic and non sought out—not only were they unnecessary, Loki wasn’t sure if they were allowed at all. To seek them out would be… What would it be? Wrong? It wasn’t as though Loki was particularly in the habit of avoiding things simply because they were wrong. Unfair? To ask Thor to treat his brother as his lover? Why would Loki even want such a thing? Did Loki want such a thing?

So Loki bit his lip and kept everything to himself but a few halfhearted quips, and told Thor to take him from behind so that he didn’t even have to make the choice of whether or not to look at him or not. He closed his eyes and tried very hard not to think about how the hook in his chest was tugging at him to _touch, kiss, lick, explore, have, possess, give, take, love, love, love_.

Even though Thor was obviously trying to restrain himself, his thrusts grew harder as he neared orgasm. More erratic. Loki found himself panting, his breath driven out of him, and then Thor began to glow.

When the wave of magic overtook them, Loki pressed his cheek to the mattress and Thor pressed his cheek to Loki’s shoulder. It sighed through them like a warm summer breeze. Loki found himself reaching back and grasping the back of Thor’s head and his fingers tightened briefly in Thor’s hair. Thor murmured something into his shoulder that Loki couldn’t make out.

Strangely, Loki found his mood improved. Thor’s magic really was something else. Thor sat up and pulled away and Loki’s hands were a bit unsteady as he cleaned them up with seidr.

“Thank you,” Thor said. “Norns, ‘thank you’ seems so inadequate.”

“Save your gratitude,” Loki said, rolling over onto his back. “You’re still going to owe me something big.”

“Do you know what’s been happening the last week?” Thor said. He settled back down next to Loki, their heads on the same pillow. His voice was low and warm and intimate. Loki had the absurd desire to kiss him.

“Not unless you tell me.”

“Every time I set foot outside, flowers spring up in my footsteps,” Thor said. “You can follow my path around Asgard precisely just by following the flower trail.”

“It must be terribly easy for your enemies to track you now.”

Thor chuckled. “I feel like a maiden from some tale. I can’t say I mind overmuch.”

“You’re ridiculously sentimental, has anyone ever told you that?”

Thor only hummed contentedly, then, “You haven’t cut your hair,” he said out of nowhere.

Instinctively, Loki reached up and fingered the ends of it.

“I suppose I haven’t.”

“Sentiment,” Thor singsonged lightly, and Loki pinched him.

*

Thor stayed for some wine afterwards. An unspoken feeling of closeness had them not wanting to part and the gremlin in Loki’s chest was far too pleased about it. They went out into Loki’s study to find that the ivy had grown across the entire floor and, of course, had completely ruined Loki’s rug. Thor took one end of the couch and Loki took the other.

“I guess I’ll deal with this later,” Loki grumbled, and lifted his feet from the leafy ground when he sat down. He thrust them into Thor’s lap. Thor gave him a look, and Loki poked at his face with his toes until Thor laughed and grabbed his foot to stop him. He left his hand on Loki’s right foot, curled around the top of it and his thumb rubbing at Loki’s instep. It felt extremely nice.

“I’ve been thinking,” Loki said. He ran his finger around the top of his wineglass, and licked off the drops. “I have a list of things I was planning on doing before the year runs out. But obviously we can’t be apart for more than about a week and a half. You should come with me.”

“What kind of things?” Thor asked.

“Oh you know.” Loki fluttered his hand. “Me things.”

“So, illegal?”

“Definitely. But fun!”

Thor laughed. “Show me this list.”

Loki waved his hand and a piece of parchment lifted off his desk and floated over to Thor’s outstretched hand. Thor’s eyebrows did interesting things as he started reading down it.

“Loki,” he said sternly. “We’ve talked about the horse thing.”

Loki shrugged innocently and took another sip of wine.

“ _‘See if I can create enough clones to pull off the Virenzi Scheme’_? What is that?”

“Best not to ask.”

Thor shook his head and kept reading, then put the paper down and gave Loki an Extreme Look. “ _‘Turn into a bird and shit on Thor.’_ ”

Loki couldn’t help giggling. “Did I really put that? I must have been annoyed at you.”

“Why does that require increased powers, anyway? You’ve been able to turn into animals since you were eight.”

“Snakes, yes. Birds? That’s another thing entirely. You can’t just be vaguely cylinder shaped. You have to be _aerodynamic_. And hitting a moving target? That requires finesse. Artistry!” He waved his hand loftily. “Keep going.”

Thor mumbled to himself as he picked the paper back up and started scanning down it again, picking off items to read out loud.

“ _‘Find a tribe to make worship me as a benevolent and devastatingly handsome god.’_ Don’t forget modest. _‘Steal the Sight from one of Heimdall’s eyes.’_ Only one? _‘See if I can withstand the force of an erupting volcano—’_ What? Why? Why would you want to do that?”

“Why not?”

“ _‘Make Amora fall in love with a pig that she thinks is a man so that everyone laughs at her.’_ Loki, that’s both disgusting and immoral.”

“So is she.”

“ _‘Try to create an exact replica of Gungnir and—’_ ” Thor guffawed. “Did you actually write _‘admire myself in the mirror with it’_ and then cross it out?”

“Oh shut up,” Loki said. “Read what I wrote instead.”

“ _‘Try to create an exact replica of Gungnir and see if it can activate the Bifrost.’_ ”

“Wouldn’t that be grand? Also, you can add _‘bottle some basilisk breath’_ on there, because I’m all out and you’re going to help me get more.”

“Oh am I?”

Thor was starting to get to the bottom of the list now, and Loki suddenly remembered the last thing he’d put on it.

“You can give me the list back now,” he said.

“No, I’m not done—”

“Give it _back_ —”

“Wait a minute!”

Loki surged up and grabbed for the paper, but Thor pulled it out of his reach, and they half wrestled for a moment before Thor managed to get an eyeball on it and read off, “ _‘Take Thor to see the sunrise on Delphi IX.’_ Aww, Loki, really? I’m touched.”

Loki growled, flopping back down. “You know as well as I do that Delphi IX is, one, off limits due to a treaty, two, has a toxic atmosphere, and, three, is crawling with bloodthirsty ice bears, so getting there and seeing the sunrise will be a real feat.”

“Yes, but you want to get there with _me_.”

“I can be whimsical,” Loki grumbled. If he’d just left well enough alone and hadn’t made a grab for the paper Thor probably wouldn’t have thought much of it, but since Loki had turned it into a Thing it had become one, and he was embarrassed now. He tried to will the red out of his cheeks.

“Anyway,” Loki said. “There it is. It should keep us busy until our powers run out. Will you come with me or not? Because if I have to hang around the palace instead I _will_ go mad and I _will_ cause mischief and there _will_ be some kind of intergalactic incident.”

“I’ll come with you,” Thor said. “On one condition. I get to use my powers too.”

“And how will you do that?”

“I’m going to make a list of all the systems who have reported droughts or famines in the last year or two, and we’re going to visit those as well.”

“Oh,” Loki said. He’d been so busy thinking about personal gain that he had never even stopped to consider what he might be able to do for others with his increased seidr, and he felt a vague rumbling of guilt. Only a tiny one though. Minuscule, really. And a surge of affection for his kind-hearted brother. Also tiny and minuscule.

“Flowery footsteps are nice and all,” Thor said, “but I think I can be much more useful than that.”

“Your generosity is going to get you in trouble someday,” Loki said. “But I suppose that sounds reasonable.”


	3. Chapter 3

Thor suggested that they do something on his list first instead of Loki’s.

“We’re going to have to ask Heimdall to send us, and if we do something _good_ to start off with—” and here Thor had given Loki a look, “—there will likely be less suspicion.”

“You’re just not used to these sorts of clandestine things,” Loki had said kindly, his nose in the air. “We’ll get you up to my speed.”

Really, if Thor kept rolling his eyes like that they were going to fall out.

But Loki had acquiesced, as he did with a disgusting degree of regularity where Thor was concerned, and so they found themselves in one of Asgard’s outlying colonies that, as far as Loki could tell, was composed entirely of mud. And muddy people. Living in muddy houses. He was going to have to bathe for a week straight afterwards.

_With Thor…!_ the chest gremlin cackled.

Nevertheless, it was good to be out adventuring with his brother. They hadn’t taken a trip that was just the two of them in a few decades. Loki was just starting to recall how much fun they’d always had when they did, even if the first stop this time was a do-gooder one.

The colonists eyed Thor and Loki a bit askance when they showed up, but Thor’s powers didn’t take long to prove themselves. First he altered the weather pattern, nudging it out of the negative feedback loop that had caused the ceaseless rains that drowned the crops and turned everything to mud. When the rain ended, he walked the fields and called on the plants to grow, and the chickens to lay, and the goats’ dry udders to fill with milk. 

The people wept in gratitude. They made Thor and Loki stay for a celebration and showered them with thanks to the point of near-worship. Thor accepted it all with an easy grace which Loki had always envied. Loki accepted it all with no grace whatsoever; his head grew three sizes though he had done nothing at all except accompany Thor.

“I get to pick what we do next,” Loki said that night as they lay in the dark sharing the only guest room in the town’s common house.

“Was this too wholesome for you?” Thor asked from his pile of blankets on the floor.

“You know me so well.”

Loki spent the next hour telling his chest gremlin to shut up as it urged him to get up and join Thor in his blanket pile, or pull Thor into bed with him. When he finally fell asleep it was only to dream of warm hands on his hips and golden light in his breast and a living canopy of flowers. When he woke the next morning he felt a sense of loss, though he wasn’t quite sure why.

“We’re going to Nornheim next,” Loki said over breakfast (fruits of Thor’s labors, presented to them by a beaming tavernkeep). “Specifically, a certain city that happens to be the home of a certain person who holds a particular interest for me.”

“Does he owe you money?”

Loki ripped a roll in half. “Not exactly.”

*

They traveled to the biggest city in Nornheim. The architectural style wasn’t so very different from that of Asgard, only it was mostly marble and wood with flashes of gilt rather than solid gold. Loki actually found it slightly more tasteful than Asgard; no one had ever accused his father of having good decorating sense.

He changed their appearance when they got there. He turned himself into a handsome redheaded man with a sharp face and a wicked grin and magicked himself up a lute; turned Thor into a burly nondescript man of middling years with lank brown hair and a crooked nose.

“Why are we here?” Thor asked. They were lurking in the shadows across the street from a tavern in one of the seedier parts of the city trying to look like they weren’t casing the joint.

“You had it almost right,” Loki said, adjusting his lute and tucking his hair behind his ear. “There is money owed. Except I’m the one who owes it, and I don’t intend on paying it back.”

“Lokiii,” Thor groaned.

“Just keep your mouth shut,” Loki said, “and try to look vaguely threatening. But not too threatening. Mostly just drink. You can handle that, right? I just need to butter up some of Karnilla’s cronies enough to get an audience.”

“And what do you plan on doing once we get an audience?”

“Oh, you know.”

“I do not, in fact, know. Perhaps you might enlighten me.”

“Why do I ever do anything?” Loki asked, then continued without for an answer, “I’ll tell you: spite, personal gain, or fun. This happens to satisfy all three. Don’t worry, brother, it’ll just be a bit of fun. I’ll leave her safe and sound afterwards to rue her terrible decisions.”

“In this case, getting involved with you.”

Loki smiled cheerfully. “Precisely.”

Thor rolled his eyes and shook his head. He crossed the street and entered the tavern, and Loki waited a few minutes before sauntering over himself.

He’d been lying to Thor. There was a woman, yes, a sorceress named Karnilla, but Loki didn’t actually owe her any money at all. The truth was she’d outclassed him magically the last time they’d met and embarrassed Loki horribly, and he wanted to turn the tables on her; find her and use his new powers to beat her at her own tricks and embarrass her so badly that her children’s children would bear the shame. This mission was pure magic-filled spite. And, perhaps, a bit of fun.

Well, it would have been if it had gone as planned. Which it didn’t. Because, once again, Loki’s mistakes related to Thor were as frequent as they were varied, and this time was no exception.

The way it should have gone was this: Thor would install himself at the bar while Loki sweet talked the manager into letting him play the room for tips. He’d work his way around, picking at his lute and putting his silver tongue to good use—a little sly humor, a little teasing, a little coaxing. A lot of innuendo. When he found his targets (Karnilla’s subordinates), he would draw them out. Let his gaze linger, let his hands wander (discreetly!). Invite them up to the bar for drinks and then invite them into the alleyway behind the establishment for more than drinks. Thor would follow. And then they’d persuade the hapless idiot to either tell them where Karnilla was or take them to her themselves (Loki’s knives and Thor’s fists were _very_ persuasive).

Easy. Nothing to it.

The way it actually went was this: Thor installed himself at the bar while Loki sweet talked the manager into letting him play the room for tips. He worked his way around, picking at his lute and putting his silver tongue to good use—a little sly humor, a little teasing, a little coaxing. But Thor, instead of drinking nonchalantly at the bar like he was supposed to be doing, was following Loki with his eyes. Looking at him.

Not just looking at him. _Looking_ at him.

It threw Loki off his rhythm. There was something about Thor’s eyes, despite the unfamiliarity of the face in which they sat, that made Loki’s stomach tighten.

He tried to ignore Thor and rally.

Teasing, right. Coaxing. Innuendo. A lot of...innuendo.

A lot of Thor’s eyes burning holes into him. A lot of white-knuckled gripping of tankards. A lot of empties in front of Thor on the bar. Loki started to feel a bit nervous. What exactly he was nervous about he wasn’t sure. He laughed at something someone said that wasn’t actually funny at all, and Thor glared and licked his lips, and for some reason it made Loki’s insides tingle.

Right. Back on plan.

When Loki found his targets (Karnilla’s subordinates), he chose the weakest link and began to draw the poor sod out. Let his gaze linger, let his hands wander (discreetly!). The next step was supposed to be inviting his mark up to the bar, but he faltered a bit when he heard a crash, and turned to see that Thor had knocked all of his empty tankards to the ground and kicked his barstool over. He was beginning to attract attention. The people who had been sitting around him leaped to their feet, cursing, and the barkeep stormed over angrily.

Shit.

Forget the plan. Loki needed to get out of here and away from his increasingly belligerent brother who for some inexplicable reason was fucking it up completely. Loki’s mark was fairly drunk, and handsy, and Loki leaned in to whisper in his ear.

“Care to join me outside?” he breathed.

The man practically fell over himself in his haste to get up. Loki was just going to have to work him over by himself and then come back and deal with Thor and his mess in a few minutes.

Except they had to walk past the bar where Thor was currently causing a scene in order to get out the door, and just as they were passing him the man that Loki was with put his hand on the small of Loki’s back, and Thor—well, Thor went insane.

That was the only explanation Loki could think of for why Thor pushed through the group of people yelling at him, reached out, grabbed the poor idiot Loki was leading out into the alley, and, snarling, lifted him into the air by his neck. 

Chaos erupted.

The other bar patrons, already riled, jumped on Thor. Thor went down under a pile of bodies, then surged up, roaring, with two men dangling from each arm, and knocked their heads together.

Loki wanted to scream. What the fuck was Thor _doing_?

Half the people in the tavern began scrambling to get away, and the other half began scrambling to join in the fight. Loki had to duck as a chair went whistling over his head. Someone launched themselves at him and he knocked the person across the room before he could even make out if it was a man or a woman.

Thor was wading through the struggling throng of people, tossing them left and right, trying to make his way over to Loki. It was ridiculous, really, how much stronger he was than everyone else. Anyone else. None of them stood a chance against him. It was actually sort of magnificent. Despite Loki’s anger at the situation, he almost wished that Thor was wearing his own face, that everyone might know they were being bested by the God of Thunder.

But still, Thor was ruining absolutely everything.

“What are you doing!” Loki screamed at him over the din. “What is your problem!”

Thor didn’t answer, just growled and reached past Loki to grab the man who’d been coming up behind him, pick him up by the neck, and throw him over the bar to crash into the bottles behind it.

“We have to get out of here!” Loki yelled. “Come on!”

He grabbed Thor’s hand and managed to pull him out the back door. The cool night air hit them like a slap to the face.

“What—” Loki started to say, but then his breath was driven out of him as Thor shoved him up against the rough plaster wall and ground their pelvises together. Norns, he was hard as a rock.

“Fuck,” Thor groaned, “fuck, Loki, I—”

Oh. _Ohhh._ Was this what had driven Thor crazy? His lust was upon him again? Loki hadn’t had any idea it was this _strong_ —

“Not here,” Loki gasped.

Thor started dragging him out of the alley, his hand around Loki’s wrist and Loki flapping along behind him like a pennant. Light and noise and bodies were spilling out of all the windows and doors of the tavern they’d just fled. His belly fluttering with nerves and...dread? anticipation? excitement?... Loki dissolved the glamour he’d cast on them. It was almost a relief to see Thor’s real face again. 

“Where?” Thor growled. “Quickly.”

“The inn, up the street,” Loki said breathlessly. “I saw it on the way in.”

Thor kicked open the door of the inn, growled something at the innkeeper and threw an entire bag of coins at him, and hauled Loki upstairs and into the first open room he found.

“Thor,” Loki said, struggling for some sort of mediocre grasp upon the situation, hovering somewhere between anger and confusion, “what in Bor’s name is going on? What is your problem?”

Thor threw the bolt on the door and tested it, and when he turned back to face Loki, Loki took a step backwards at the expression on his face.

“Do you really want to know?” Thor said, low and rough.

“I really do.”

Thor took a step closer.

“I watched you tonight,” Thor said.”I watched you smile and laugh, heard all your pretty words for people who weren’t me. And I wanted to take every single person who dared to speak to you, and smash their faces into the ground. And then—”

Thor took another step forward, and Loki willed himself not to take another step back. His heart was beating somewhere up in his throat. His anger and confusion was giving way to something else entirely.

“You touched someone,” Thor said. “And let him touch you. And then—” Thor’s hand stole to his own chest, right over the spot where Loki himself always felt that insistent tug, and Loki found himself mirroring the gesture. Unbreathing.

“Go on,” Loki whispered. He was transfixed with a dreadful sort of excited curiosity.

“I was filled with the most terrible rage. And I wanted to carry you from there, and crush you to a bed, and fill you up until the only thought left in your head is how well I’m fucking you, and the only word left on your lips is my name. I want to make you come over and over again. I want your pleasure, your moans, your spend, your undying fidelity to me and only me. I want to take you apart. And then I want to do it again.”

Loki realized distantly that Thor had changed verb tenses somewhere in there, and his voice was shaking, and that Loki’s own hand was twisting the fabric of his tunic so tightly that the fabric threatened to rip. He blinked rapidly. Thor continued—

“And my mind knows that you are my brother and you did not ask for this, and I did not ask for this, and that you don’t belong to me and I cannot ask...any of this of you—”

Loki couldn’t listen to any more. “Shut up,” Loki said, cutting Thor off, his own voice shaking as well. “Just shut up and get over here before you spontaneously combust again.”

“I’ve been holding back so much the other times. I don’t think I can...control myself tonight…”

“Then don’t,” Loki heard himself say.

Thor advanced on Loki hungrily. What in the Nine was Loki getting himself into? He felt a twinge low in his gut. Thor looked like he wanted to eat him alive. Why did Loki find Thor’s expression so electrifying? Why was he encouraging this? He should be angry. He should be knocking Thor through a bar himself for messing up his plans so spectacularly by behaving like a jealous, possessive, lunkhead with more muscles than brains. For daring to presume that he could speak the words he just had, and that Loki wouldn’t stab him for it or worse. And yet... 

Something crawled into Loki’s chest, a wild desperate hunger, and he realized that there was some part of him that thrilled to Thor’s jealousy, that coveted his brother’s undivided desire, that, in fact, wanted nothing more than to let Thor do every single thing he’d just said and then some. 

Thor didn’t break eye contact until he buried his hands in Loki’s hair and his face in Loki’s neck and inhaled deeply. 

“You always smell so fucking good,” Thor said.

Loki whimpered.

The sound seemed to break something in Thor. Growling, he started ripping their clothes off. Loki heard fabric tear and it drew a high incredulous laugh out of him. Thor bore them down onto the bed, his huge heavy bulk pressing Loki deep into the mattress. 

“Magic us some oil,” Thor growled.

Loki did. His hands fluttered uselessly at Thor’s back as Thor buried his face in Loki’s neck again and, skipping over the fingering portion of the night entirely, started working himself right in. Ymir’s blood, he was so big. It punched Loki’s breath out of him.

Thor started driving into him, hard, and Loki clutched at his shoulders. He laughed again, a breathless noise that was half a groan. For once Loki had no words, because Thor’s words were playing on a loop in his head. _I want to make you come over and over again, I want your pleasure, I want your undying fidelity, I want to make you come over and over again, I want—_

Growling, Thor rose up and pulled Loki up and into his lap. Loki had no choice but to hold onto Thor's neck and wrap his legs around his waist (of course there wasn’t a choice, what else was he supposed to do? get up and leave?). Thor’s arms went around him, his hands raking up Loki’s back and then clawing his way back down, crushing Loki to his chest as he pumped up into him urgently. They couldn’t tear their gazes away from each other.

This was so different from the two other times they’d fucked. There was no joking around now, no careful consideration.

Loki had had other lovers, many of them in fact, but no one had ever met him with such hungry passion before. His frayed mind couldn’t make sense of it. _I want your pleasure, I want to make you come, I want to take you apart._ He gasped when Thor grabbed onto his hips and slammed him downwards just as Thor was thrusting up particularly roughly, and Thor grunted, and Loki wrapped his arms tighter around Thor’s neck and pressed Thor’s face into the juncture of his neck and shoulder, and Thor’s teeth found the tendon there and he _bit_. Norns, the absolute _nerve_ , Loki ought to open up his mouth and tell Thor in no uncertain terms that absolutely none of this was acceptable, _none_ of it, and he did, he opened up his mouth and—

Thor sucked Loki’s flesh where he’d just bitten and Loki whimpered again.

Embarrassingly, for the first time, Loki’s cock grew hard. It was trapped between their bellies and it began to thicken and swell, a heat coiling deep in Loki’s core. He squirmed in Thor’s arms.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Loki babbled, as though he had done something wrong. As though, despite Thor’s words to the contrary, finding his own desire in this was something that Thor would find distasteful. He didn’t even know why he should care. They seemed a bit beyond that at this point. A tad. A hair. Thor didn’t let him squirm away though, and his arms tightened around Loki, and his thrusts grew all the more hungry.

_I want your pleasure_.

Loki fisted both hands in Thor’s hair. Held on so tightly he was sure he must be hurting him, but Thor didn’t even flinch. He didn’t understand what was happening to him. To them.

Loki was getting the fuck of his life right now; everything it lacked in finesse it made up for in passion. But this was _Thor_ who was fucking him so wonderfully. _Thor_ who was stirring such a fervor in his breast. Thor, Thor, Thor. _I want your undying fidelity. I want to make you come_.

Thor, who Loki had loved since his first breath.

_...with my name on your lips..._

“Thor,” Loki gasped. “Brother.”

Thor groaned and shuddered and closed his hand around Loki’s cock, and Loki keened, the sound torn from his throat involuntarily.

Loki put his hand over Thor’s. Thor’s hand was on his _cock_ and they were stroking it together, and Loki was afraid that he might pass out from the sheer unexpected pleasure. He writhed in Thor’s lap...he just needed to _move_ , to twist and buck and rock...because it felt so good...gods, it felt _so good_...how...why…

Their link flared brightly inside his chest. The amount of unbridled lust that reverberated between them was more intense than anything Loki had ever felt in his life.

Thor tilted his face upwards and their lips almost came together—almost—but Loki reached up and put his hand over Thor’s mouth, because he had no idea if he would ever recover from this if Thor actually _kissed him_ as well, and Thor kissed his fingers instead, sucking the tip of each one into his mouth. Loki shuddered.

_...your pleasure, your come, take you apart...come...take you apart..._

The building tension within him snapped, and Loki came on a long stuttered moan. He hid his face in Thor’s hair. Thor carried him back down onto his back and fucked into him so hard that Loki convulsively tightened all his limbs around him to hold him in, gentle him, but Thor fucked him right through that too, and Loki held on for dear life.

They clutched at each other as Thor spent and his magic overtook them. It was a storm this time, a wild thundering rain. It washed through them, cleansing them, and the fertile earth of Loki’s heart soaked it all in, quickening seeds that he hadn’t even known lay dormant there. He and Thor clung to each other. They rode it out until the storm subsided and left them light and empty. Loki felt like something enormous had just happened.

And, damn it all, Loki was going to beat Thor to within an inch of his life for no other reason than Thor’s cock inspiring such poetry in him.

Loki blinked hot tears from his eyes. This must all be the spell. It had driven Thor wild and their link had opened and it was just...Thor’s lust feeding into him, that was all. None of it actually meant anything. Just the spell.

But Thor was collapsed over Loki’s chest now, and Loki was trying not to cry and stroking Thor’s hair, and was the spell a real explanation for that? Thor at least had it as an actual excuse, but Loki?

The room was briefly illuminated by a flash of blue, followed by a crack of thunder loud enough to wake the whole city, and they both jumped. It seemed that the storm that had washed through them was also a storm in truth. They bolted up and scrambled away from each other, and Loki quickly tried to dash his tears away.

“I’m sorry—” they both started saying at the same time, and then Loki was laugh-crying.

“You haven’t caused a storm like that since you came of age,” Loki said. His fluster made the words pour out of him. “Remember the summer you finally started bedding women for the first time? The rains didn’t let up for months.”

The corner of Thor’s lip went up in a smile. “And you threatened to drown me if I didn’t stop.”

“I still might,” Loki half laughed, sniffling. 

Thor’s brow lowered, his expression changing to one of chagrin, and he reached for Loki, then pulled his hand back.

“I made you cry,” he said, the corners of his mouth downturned. “I should not have said...should not have done...any of this...this whole night…”

The rain beat harder against the window. Loki tried to shake his head, but Thor kept going.

“I’m sorry, for all of it. I hope you can forgive me.”

Loki reached out and took the hand that Thor had drawn back. He knew what Thor was trying to do, and it was probably the right and honorable thing, but his heart didn’t want to hear any of it.

“It was all just the spell,” Loki said, as convincingly as he could. “It affects both of us, it’s alright.” Maybe if he said it enough times he’d actually believe it.

Thor squeezed his hand. “Just the spell,” he said softly.

The rest of Loki’s brain came back online and he suddenly realized all at once that his own spend was cooling on both of their chests, and he was sitting in a puddle of Thor’s, and their torn clothes littered the floor, and the room only had one bed, and Thor had given absolutely all of their money to a probably very confused and very happy innkeeper, and that any thought of pursuing Karnilla had completely fled his mind. And that Loki absolutely did not want to move until the morning, and perhaps not even after that.

He vanished their spend with a thought and flopped back onto the bed and tried to collect himself.

“What you should be apologizing for is ruining our plan,” Loki said.

Thor flopped down next to him. “ _Your_ plan.”

“Semantics. It’s probably for the best anyway. My plan wasn’t a very good one. Well, it was good, but not _good_ , if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” Thor laughed. They were quiet for a moment, then Thor said, “What should we do now? Should we stay here? I don’t even know where we are.”

“You’d need a crowbar to get me out of this bed.”

“I’ll take the floor again, then.”

“Wait—”

Loki found himself reaching for Thor’s hand. He didn’t want him to go to the floor. But he didn’t know how to ask him to stay, or if Thor even would.

Thor looked at him questioningly.

“Nothing,” Loki said, and let go.


	4. Chapter 4

Loki magnanimously elected to call his mission a wash and let Thor choose one of his next.

“Don’t say I never did anything for you,” Loki said right before the Bifrost threw them across the stars.

This time they went to Midgard, to an area suffering from a combination of drought and blight. It was always odd going to Midgard; the people here were so backwards they never quite realized what Asgardians actually were, and they were hailed as deities. Loki supposed that technically this might satisfy one of the items on his list, but the worship of people as low as these hardly seemed like it should count. It was like being swarmed by particularly affectionate ants. 

They did welcome Thor and Loki warmly though, and even more so once Thor worked his magic. Loki wasn’t used to doing things so openly, accustomed as he was to operating in the shadows, and he had to fight his urge to ridicule people just to make up for the fact that he was doing something nice in public. The people were also effusive in their praise, which was so far from the scorn that Loki usually received for his actions that he didn’t know quite what to make of it. He couldn’t say it was his cup of tea, exactly, but it was quite the interesting change of pace. He could see why Thor liked it; his brother always had been a little insecure.

The humans’ leader made them stay for four days while he had them sit for a statue commissioned in their honor. Thor squirmed about the excess, but Loki elbowed him in the ribs and told him to stop being ungrateful; after Thor gave in, Loki met with the artist on the sly and talked him into changing the shape of Thor’s nose. 

For four days straight Thor and Loki were feted and toasted and glorified. They were given crowns of flowers. People promised to name their children after them. Loki had never been asked to dance so much, or had his name proclaimed with such fervor, or been handed so many babies to kiss. He wasn’t quite sure how to react. 

This was Thor’s element, though. He was radiant. It was times like these that Loki fully understood how and why his brother inspired so much devotion. Sometimes in the past when Loki had seen Thor like this it made him feel small, or lesser. Jealous that Thor had so much of himself to give and that Loki had so little. It was different this time though. He felt like he was a part of it somehow, that he was included in Thor’s energy, and that instead of becoming smaller he was becoming bigger. 

He wasn’t sure what was different. Perhaps it was the way that they stuck together practically at the hip. Or how Thor kept looking at him; seeking him out when he wasn’t right there, catching his eyes, gaze lingering. Or that Thor kept smiling at him, a special smile reserved only for Loki. 

Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t the memory of Thor’s heated words or his big warm hands on Loki’s cock or his light in Loki’s chest. Because Loki wasn’t thinking about those. Not even a little bit. Not even while he was asleep.

Loki thought it was probably for the best that he was only going to have to put up with this disgusting amount of goodness and light approximately half the time, otherwise he might go mad. Well, even more mad. He was most likely a little mad at all times just as a general rule.

“This was a good thing we did here,” Thor said the last night they spent on Midgard. They were both pleasantly drunk after the night’s celebration and meandering their way back to the house where they were staying, and Thor knocked gently against Loki’s side.

“I didn’t do all that much,” Loki said.

“You came. You didn’t cause any mischief.”

Loki smiled self-deprecatingly and knocked Thor back.

They reached Loki’s room first. Loki fumbled with the key before cursing and just flicking the lock open with seidr. His hand was already on the knob when suddenly he found himself in a mead-scented embrace.

“Wh—” was all he managed to get out. Thor nuzzled at his neck, actually had the audacity to _nuzzle_ at him, for about three long seconds, before fleeing down the hallway to his own room and leaving Loki gaping like a fish.

Loki locked himself in his room and definitely didn’t think about Thor fucking him this night either, or what his cock might feel like in Loki’s mouth, or what his lips would feel like if Loki kissed him.

*

Loki took them to a traveling casino next. It was a massive spacecraft that had been traveling the stars since before they were born and seemed in no danger of quitting. It was an entire government unto itself, and such a den of vice that Loki was sure he would be completely at home.

Loki tried to cheat the house; instead he got so thoroughly swindled himself that Thor laughed himself sick, the rotten bastard.

Thor’s lust came upon him while they were there. They fucked in Loki’s room, and when Thor’s magic passed through them it inundated Loki with love and desire and overwhelming need, and it was molten fire in his veins, and he _needed_ to spill, he needed it more than he had ever needed anything in his entire life, and he almost sobbed with the frustration of it… But before he could even draw breath, Thor moved down his body and took Loki’s cock into his mouth.

They found out the next morning that every single plant in the ship had exploded in growth overnight and exceeded the life support systems, and that the ship was making an emergency landing for the first time in two thousand years.

Loki thought it was the funniest thing that had ever happened.

“I’m zero for two on my outings,” Loki complained as they beat a hasty retreat. “We’re doing another one of mine next.”

*

And so it went, mostly.

They alternated being saviors of the realms with being entirely up to no good. Loki used his powers profligately and it felt, frankly, amazing. He only wished he could harness this kind of seidr all the time.

Officially, as Thor and Loki, Princes of Asgard, they were making quite a name for themselves as they made their way through the famine-stricken worlds of the Nine Realms. Unofficially, as a pair of drifters, they magicked and laughed and drank and gambled and cheated (Loki) and fought (mostly Thor) their way through the underbelly of those same realms. They made friends and enemies. They had all their belongings stolen. Twice. They had to run for their lives on more than one occasion. Once, they fell asleep in the woods and woke up tied together in a rock troll’s cave next to a bubbling pot; Thor had saved them by telling the pack of trolls jokes all night until the sun rose and turned them all to stone. Another time, Loki saved Thor from being offered as a sacrifice to an elder god by convincing an entire temple full of priestesses that he himself was their god, that Thor was an unworthy sacrifice to his magnificence, and that from now on he wished only offerings of interpretive dance.

They also fucked.

A lot.

They figured out that Thor could never go more than about ten days without sex, and if they actually waited until it became a necessity then things got dicey like they had in that tavern where Thor had started the bar fight, so they tried to just fuck often enough that it never got to that point.

Loki had never had quite so active a sex life before, and he had no idea how to feel about the fact that right now it was the best it had ever been, and it was with his _brother_. And it wasn’t just the quantity; the quality kept getting better and better as they lost their inhibitions about it one by one. With how often they had to grace each other’s beds (and floors and tables and sleeping rolls and, once, a tiny escape pod made for one person), there seemed no point in pretending that it couldn’t be good for both of them. 

And Ymir’s balls, was it good. Thor’s fingers and tongue possessed a black magic that Loki dreamed about when he wasn’t actively experiencing it. And his cock! Not just the size of it, but the technique, the stamina. Thor could plough him twelve different ways for an hour straight until both of them were sweaty moaning disasters.

Every time Thor climaxed the local wildlife went crazy, so they left a trail of growth wherever they went; Thor’s flowery footprints on an intergalactic scale.

Once they fucked in a cave. When they were done, the cave was more like a jungle: phosphorescent moss on the walls an inch thick, and mushrooms grown over their heads. Thor made a joke about spelunking and Loki turned him into a blind cave fish for the rest of the day. When he turned Thor back, Thor set Mjolnir on his chest and wouldn’t let him up until he’d composed and sung an “I’m sorry” song.

Another time they’d been arguing for at least a week, and it had come to blows. As they knocked each other around the side of a hill airing their grievances with their fists, flowers and saplings sprang up everywhere Thor touched. Thor had taken Loki there in the grass on the hillside, and by the time they were done they were lashed fast to the ground and each other with blooming vines, and a cloud of butterflies had lighted upon Thor’s back like a fluttering blanket; when he shifted they all lifted off at once in a cloud of iridescence. Thor was already so beautiful that it felt hardly fair to gild the lily so, but Loki couldn’t find it in himself to mind all that much since he was the one who got to see such splendors. Thor was actually the one who should mind it, since he was the one forced to look at Loki’s lackluster visage instead.

Not that he even seemed to realize it, the oaf.

“My beautiful brother,” he murmured afterwards, picking flowers out of Loki’s hair, and he didn’t even sound like he was being ironic.

Taking the Nine Realms by storm with Thor at his side...The heroism, the skulduggery, the fantastic sex… At some point, Loki realized that he was simply having the best year of his life. When the year had begun he’d wondered how they would get through it, but now that it was really on a roll he was starting to get sad that all too soon it would have to end.

*

“I still can’t believe you never cut your hair,” Thor said.

Loki shrugged. He was sitting on the ground at Thor’s feet watching their campfire crackle while Thor combed and braided his hair for him.

“It looks nice enough,” he said. “Why would I?”

“I don’t know.” Thor’s hands tugged at Loki’s scalp as he worked. “It was kind of a...you know...big messed up thing that caused it. I didn’t think you’d want to be constantly reminded.”

Loki laughed hard enough that Thor had to tug on his hair to get his head back in place.

“Traveling around with you it’s not like I could forget,” Loki said, still trying to catch his breath. “Norns, you’re an odd one. Besides—” He tilted his head back far enough to look at Thor for an instant. “—it’s not so messed up as all that, is it?”

Thor smiled and tied Loki’s braid off, then leaned down and kissed his forehead.

“I suppose it’s not.”

*

They were out dancing somewhere in the Castelion system. The venue was boisterous, dark with bright lights, full of energy and the deep thump of drums. They'd each had many dancing partners over the night, and twice as many drinks. Loki leaned on the bar gulping some water and watching Thor dance with a being who had tentacles that resembled hair; Thor was laughing, and spinning, and Loki gazed upon him with unspeakable fondness.

“Care to dance?” someone said from Loki’s elbow. He looked over to see a tiny woman with purple skin and a ready smile.

“Sorry, I think I'm tapped out for the night,” Loki said.

“More's the pity. I saw your moves, I think we'd have fun.”

“Hah. Thank you.”

“You should go to him,” she said.

“Pardon me?”

She gestured towards Thor, who was now spinning his partner up in the air over his head while they shriek laughed.

“Your lover, you should go to him.”

Loki laughed. “He's not my lover, he's my brother.”

It was her turn to laugh. “I've seen you two together all night, and I've never seen brothers look at each other that way before.”

Loki pressed the cold glass of water to his face to cool his sudden flush.

“You must be mistaken,” he said.

“Am I?” she asked, her eyes sparkling, but then she was being tugged away by a friend, and Loki was left alone in a drunken confusion with a chest full of butterflies.

He made his way over to Thor, pushing through the crowd, and took him by the elbow.

“Time to go!” he tried to yell over the din of drums and people.

“What?” Thor yelled back, leaning in closer.

“I said—”

But just then the music changed and Loki’s voice died in his throat lest he be screaming into the sudden lull. Someone jostled them and made Loki lose his balance; Thor’s arms caught him and he held on while his head spun.

“One more dance?” Thor asked. “It’s a slow one.”

“Alright,” Loki said. “But you’ll have to hold me up.”

Thor did. He hugged Loki to his chest, and Loki put his arms around him and they swayed in a slow circle. One of Thor’s hands wandered up and down Loki’s back and Loki let out a pleased little ‘mmm.’

“Mother would die of shame if we danced this sloppily at home,” Loki said.

“Good thing we’re not home.”

“Mmm,” he said again.

Loki’s brain spun in the same lazy circles they were dancing in. _’Go to your lover’_ , he thought. _Well, here I am._

It hit him, then, just how soon this would all be over. They had a month left before their enforced closeness was over. And he realized how much he loved being right here, tucked under Thor’s chin and feeling his heart beat against his chest, and that when he didn’t have it anymore he was going to miss it terribly.

Thor squeezed him a bit tighter and their link flared. Loki’s breath hitched as a sharp pang of wistful longing reverberated between them.

“Did you feel that?” Thor asked, a trifle breathless sounding, and Loki nodded against his chest. “Is it just the spell?”

“I don’t know.”

He didn’t. He didn’t know anything anymore. He didn’t know if the longing that had just consumed them was his or Thor’s or both, or the spell, or some conflation of all three, or simply the universe speaking through them. He simply knew that he wanted.

Thor pulled back far enough to tip Loki’s chin up and look into his eyes.

“Tonight?” Thor asked him, and his meaning was clear.

“Yes.” _Gods, yes_.

They somehow managed to stumble back to where they were staying. Thor never let go of Loki’s hand, and indeed Loki would simply have taken it again if he had. A sense of urgency seemed to have possessed both of them.

Loki was slamming the button to shut their door and drawing his tunic over his head at the same time, and Thor was kicking his boots into the corner, and then Thor pushed him up against the wall, and Loki let his head fall back, let the world spin around him while Thor ran his hands up Loki’s chest to curl around his neck, push into his hair and hold him there.

“Thor,” Loki said. His world was Thor right now and he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Can I kiss you?” Thor asked, their lips already only a breath apart.

The words made Loki’s scalp tingle, all the way down to his spine until he shivered in Thor’s hold. Somehow, despite how many times they’d fucked, this was a bridge they’d never crossed. They’d never talked about it; it had just sort of become an unspoken rule at some point. In fact, Loki may have had his mouth on every part of Thor except for his lips. It suddenly seemed like such a silly thing to have avoided.

“You can do whatever you want to me.”

Thor’s lips were upon his before the words were even fully out of his mouth, and, oh, if Loki had been tingling before, he was on fire now. He made a noise into Thor’s mouth and found himself putting his arms around Thor’s neck and pulling him closer. Closer. It was all his mind could think of, that one word. Closer. Thor sucked Loki’s lower lip into his mouth and ran his tongue over it and Loki chased Thor’s tongue with his own. Closer. He wrapped his leg around Thor’s and pulled, slid one of his arms to curl around Thor’s shoulder and grip and tug. Closer. Thor groaned and pushed his hips against Loki’s, licked into his mouth. Closer closer closer.

They both tilted their heads the same way at the same time and their teeth clacked. Laughing, they pulled away from each other. Thor caught Loki’s lips again in a smiling kiss and Loki ‘mmm’ed into it and licked at his lips, and they started giggling again for no reason at all.

“Come on,” Loki said breathlessly. “Let’s see if we can make every potted plant in this hotel triple in size.”

“The poor staff,” Thor murmured. “I hope they don’t get in trouble.”

“I hope they do.”

“ _Loki_.”

They didn’t even quite make it into the bed. Thor took him bent over the side of it, and Loki scrabbled at the blankets for purchase, and Thor covered one of Loki’s hands with his own and laced their fingers together as their souls sang. Thor collapsed to sit on the floor afterwards. Loki rolled over onto his back and patted around til he found the top of Thor’s head.

“Get up here,” he said.

Thor pawed his way up onto the bed and across Loki with exaggerated movements, flopping on top of him and blowing a raspberry on his neck, and Loki squeaked and shoved at him til he rolled off and onto his side. They looked at each other for a long moment with the smiles fading on their lips.

_Oh,_ Loki thought calmly. _I’m in love with my brother._


	5. Chapter 5

What do you do when you’re in love with your brother?

Well, for starters, you certainly don’t _tell_ him.

Loki couldn’t think of anything more preposterous than bald-facedly exclaiming to Thor that he was in love with him. Thor would, one, laugh himself to death, two, never let Loki hear the end of it, three, get an even bigger head than he already had, four, possibly start treating Loki like a pair of smelly socks, five—

Well, forget five, Loki could go on all day and four reasons was enough. That wasn’t even counting the biggest reason, which was that Thor was only even hanging out with Loki and giving it to him on the regular because of a spell, and once that was over then it was _over_ , no ifs, ands, or buts.

Despite what tiny purple women in space cantinas said, they were _not_ lovers.

So Loki tried not to let on that he’d had an epiphany. He had no idea how successful he was. He certainly felt like his banter was not up to par, that his mischief lacked a little heart; all his mental energy was going towards not having a catastrophic meltdown and simply leaping into Thor’s arms and demanding love and attention. Would Thor realize why he was acting a little subdued though? Probably not. He never had been very perceptive.

“What’s bothering you?” Thor asked one morning while they were getting dressed.

_I’m in love with you. I think I have been for a very long time now. I don’t know how to tell you. I don’t want to tell you. I have you right now but in a week everything will go back to normal and I think I might die. I want you to kiss me. I wish I hated you instead._

“Nothing,” Loki said. He proceeded to burn the bacon because he was staring at Thor’s ass while Thor rummaged through their packs.

“Midgard?” Thor asked, taking a piece of burned bacon with no complaint.

“Again?”

“They need a lot of help. They’re adorable, but…”

“Hopelessly backwards?” Loki said. “Technologically inadequate? Dumb as rocks and twice as stubborn?”

“I think that last one is just you describing me.”

Loki couldn’t help but smirk. “Don’t flatter yourself. But fine, Midgard it is.”

*

Loki had no idea what Thor liked about Midgard. He certainly wouldn’t call the people adorable. Smelly, maybe. 

They visited a country where most of the people lived in the mountains herding flocks of sheep through the greening of the alpine fields. The grass wasn’t green when they got there, but brown, and the sheep’s milk had run dry and their coats were thin. Thor brought the color back, gave the weather a nudge, revived the poor beasts and the people alike.

The celebration ran for two days. There was a maypole with colorful ribbons, dancing maidens, singing, drinking. There were bowls of bright yellow butter and jugs of clotted cream so thick a spoon would stand up straight in it.

“Pardon me,” a young man said to Loki, “Mr. Angel, sir.”

Loki was drinking the weak local beer and distracting himself from wanting to plaster himself to Thor’s side by watching the dancing around the maypole. The boy’s voice was shy and hesitant and he wouldn’t meet Loki’s eyes. Loki sighed. No matter how many times they told these people they weren’t angels, whatever those were—

“Begging your pardon,” the boy said again, repeating himself, stammering, “but my sister...she picked these for you...she wanted you to have them…as a thank you...” He bowed his head and thrust a wooden bowl at Loki that was heaped high with red berries.

“Where did you get these?” Loki said sharply. 

“I told you, my sister—”

“No, where did _she_ get them?”

That was an entire bowl full of Xytaxian fire berries that this human was shoving into his face. Loki couldn’t have been more surprised if the boy had spontaneously taken off into the air, or sprouted an extra head. Midgard didn’t even have electricity, much less interstellar travel; there should have been no way for these berries to exist within light years of here.

“I don’t know,” the boy said, clearly taken aback.

“Bring me to her.”

*

It turned out that the boy’s sister liked to wander around the mountains by herself in places she probably shouldn’t be at all, but especially not alone. She described to them a particular place where she’d fallen into a small crevasse, but instead of being stuck in the rock like she expected, she landed on her feet in a wondrous place full of ripe fruits and crystal clear streams.

“Xytaxia,” Loki muttered to Thor, who crossed his arms and shifted uncomfortably.

It was extraordinary. Xytaxia was on a completely different branch of Yggdrasil. There should have been no way to get there short of space travel or the Bifrost. And yet this young girl had simply wandered there on foot.

Loki had been trying all year to try to recreate Gungnir’s Bifrost capabilities and had failed utterly despite his augmented powers. If there was some other way to travel, this would open up so many possibilities for him…

“Tell us exactly where this crevasse is,” Loki said.

*

Once they begged out of the festivities, Thor flew them to the place she had described.

Loki used his witchsight to search the area. If his powers had been weaker he might not have found it, but there it was. The faintest of ripples in the fabric of spacetime.

When they stepped through it and out into another world entirely, Loki had to stifle the urge to whoop with joy. This was marvelous! He might never have to rely on Heimdall ever again!

“Oh no,” Thor groaned theatrically. “You’re going to become even more devious now. I know it.”

“You’ve read my mind, brother mine,” Loki said, grinning. “I only wish we’d discovered this at the beginning of our trip instead of the end.”

The acknowledgement of the end of their year and a day seemed to sober both of them, and the smiles faded from their faces.

“Let’s go back to Midgard for a bit,” Thor suggested. “I don’t want to sleep here tonight.”

“Why, nervous about dragons?”

“Have you ever known me to be nervous?”

“About a great many things, in fact—”

“No. I just thought...the mountains were lovely this time of year.”

Thor had a rather wistful tone to his voice.

“As you like,” Loki said.

*

“I think I can change the destination of the ripple,” Loki said as Thor built a fire. They could have easily gone back to the village they’d come from, but Thor had started setting up camp in a clearing instead and Loki didn’t question it. He couldn’t say he minded the idea of the two of them being alone tonight. “Make it take us wherever we like. Maybe we can go on one last adventure.”

“How many days do we have left?”

“This is our last night. Perhaps a bit of time tomorrow.”

“Has it really been a year and a day already?”

If Loki didn’t know better he’d think Thor sounded disappointed. Loki definitely was. He’d been trying to avoid the thought of this being their last night all day but now it was closing in around him like choking vines.

“You know,” Loki said, not answering his rhetorical question, “a lot of cultures have a tradition of handfasting a year and a day.”

Stupid. Idiot. Moron. He had no idea why he’d just said that. It had just popped out of his mouth like he had absolutely no control over his larynx or his tongue or his lips or anything else.

Well apparently he didn’t have control over his heart either, so maybe it was only to be expected.

Thor smiled and stood from where he’d been poking at the fire. He looked so lovely, highlighted by the fire and the setting sun both, and Loki’s chest hurt.

“Do they?” Thor said warmly.

Loki hugged his knees and pressed his cheek to them, turning his face away. “You’d know that too if you paid attention in lessons,” he sniped halfheartedly.

“Of course I know that,” Thor said gently. He came over to sit down next to Loki, close enough that their shoulders touched. Loki couldn’t be faulted for leaning into him; the evening air was chill, and Thor was so large and warm. Thor put his arm around him and Loki leaned his head on Thor’s shoulder. He couldn’t be faulted for that either. That shoulder was right there just asking for it.

They sat watching the fire until the sun sank completely and the sky grew bright with stars; the pale band of the milky way arced over their heads, glittering and cold. Neither one of them seemed to want to move. Loki would take what he could get, and so he took it and sat there in silence snuggled against his brother’s side.

“The circumstances were a bit unconventional,” Thor said eventually, “but this last year has been the best of my life. I hope that you had even half as much fun as I did, and that...you can forgive me for all that I...for all that we…”

“Only half as much fun?” Loki said, his tone gently teasing, trying not to let on how raw Thor’s words were rubbing him. “Selfish.”

Thor’s arm tightened around him.

“I’m trying to be serious,” he admonished. “I know that you would never have chosen me as a sole traveling companion in ordinary circumstances, and...our circumstances were so far from ordinary…” He took a deep breath. “I can never repay you fully for what you’ve done for me. And I hope...that it doesn’t sour us in the future…”

Loki’s heart clenched tighter with every word. Noble Thor, who just wanted them to go back to being brothers same as they ever were. How unfair that Loki should have fallen in love with him. Any hope of that future was dashed now, for Loki didn’t think he could continue in close proximity to Thor after this and keep any sort of grasp on sanity.

Loki could have scoffed at Thor’s heartfelt words. Could have bared his soul and given some heartfelt words of his own. He couldn’t bring himself to do either one.

“Thank you,” Loki said instead. It seemed safe enough. Inside, he trembled like a leaf.

“Is that all you have to say?” Thor said. He sounded a bit rough.

“What else do you want me to say?” Loki said, soft, pained. “I’ve said thank you. Please don’t ask me to say anything else, because I can’t bear it.”

He rose unsteadily to his feet and paced towards the fire, hugging his arms to himself.

“Do you hate me now?” Thor asked from behind him.

“I don’t hate you.”

Loki turned back to look at him, and he was sure that all his desperate pathetic love must be written all over his face. He didn’t even have the intestinal fortitude to try and hide it right now. Thor was looking back at him, stricken.

“I don’t hate you,” Loki said again. It wasn’t a lie, but it was so far from the truth that it might as well be.

Thor stood and came up behind him, put his arms around Loki’s waist. Loki turned into his embrace and let himself bury his face in Thor’s shoulder. He chose his next words carefully. It wasn’t like he could ask Thor to sleep with him one last time for no good reason. But he wanted to, with an intensity that frightened him. If he could couch it in the proper terms...

“Do you need me tonight?” Loki asked. _Because I need you every night_.

Thor kissed his hair and held him closer.

“Yes,” Thor said. 

Loki had set up his tent on the edge of the clearing. The ceiling barely cleared Loki’s head when he was sitting flat on the ground and it was fit for two people at the very most—and that only if the other person wasn’t Thor, for he took up at least half as much space again as any ordinary man. Loki had spent more than one night in it over the past year feeling like he wouldn’t mind if Thor had decided to squish in next to him. Tonight, Loki had piled it full of blankets and furs until it made a cozy nest and set twinkling witchlights to hover in the corners. What could he say, he’d been vaguely optimistic when he was setting up. He knew this night was going to be their last.

Loki crawled in first and leaned back in his fluffy nest. Thor lifted the flap to follow and Loki drew him in, trembling. 

“You’re shaking,” Thor said, his eyes all concern. 

Loki pulled him up until Thor’s body blanketed his, their faces inches apart.

“I’m fine.”

“Brother, we don’t have to...I can probably wait until the spell is over tomorrow, you don’t need…”

“Shhh,” Loki said. Thor’s hair was tickling his cheek, and he brushed it off and let his fingers wander up to Thor’s cheek, cupped it in his hand. They had met each other many ways over the past year—awkward, enthusiastic, filthy, desperate—but never exactly like this, never this honest and tender, and the slow softness was pulling Loki apart in its own quiet way.

Thor inhaled raggedly.

“I’d like to kiss you again,” he said.

“You don’t need to keep asking.”

“I feel like I do.”

Loki smiled tremulously, the corners of his mouth unsteady, and marshaled all his courage. “Kiss me, then.”

Their lips brushed softly at first, sweetly. Loki deepened it and Thor made an involuntary needy little noise in the back of his throat that floored Loki more thoroughly than any blow Thor had ever dealt him.

“Gods,” Thor said, kissing a line across Loki’s cheek and down to his neck and then burying his face there. He got his arms around Loki, under his back, and Loki wrapped his around Thor’s shoulders, and they clung tightly. “You’re so good to me.”

“I’ve never been good a day in my life,” Loki said breathlessly, “and I resent that accusation.”

“My beautiful, prickly, brother,” Thor said, punctuating each word with another kiss, until the last one deepened again and they were sighing into each other’s mouths, the tips of their tongues chasing each other. It felt so good that Loki nearly pushed Thor off of him; if Thor kept kissing him like this he’d be ruined for the rest of his life, if he wasn’t already.

Thor seemed determined to ruin him, though. He took his time. Took Loki apart piece by piece, inch by inch. There was no part of Loki he didn’t touch, or kiss, or lick, or suckle.

 _It’s just the spell, he doesn’t mean any of it_ , Loki told himself over and over again as Thor worked him over, trying desperately not to fall even harder than he already was. It was such a very long fall, and the rocks at the bottom were so very sharp. It was hard to keep in mind while Thor was humming around his cock and making him come down his throat, though. Impossible to contemplate while Thor licked him open, then worked himself four fingers deep until he found the spot inside Loki that made him see white, and fucked him on his fingers until he came again.

By the time Thor finally took him, Loki was out of his mind with bliss, and he welcomed Thor into his body with open arms and legs.

“Fuck, you fuck me so good, _fuck_ ,” Loki swore as Thor’s cock pierced him, and he pulled Thor into a rough open-mouthed kiss.

 _How will I ever be with anyone else ever again?_ Loki thought despairingly.

Thor slid home and their link pulsed with a wave of hopeless love.

Even if Loki hadn’t been in love, he and Thor had loved each other their whole lives. The feeling wasn’t unfamiliar or surprising. The intensity of it left Loki reeling, though. It was deep, endlessly so, and strong and resonant and uplifting all at once, and left him at the edge of tears. He still didn’t know whose emotions these were when these things happened, but at the moment he was too overcome to even care. _I don’t want this to end, please, don’t let this end._

They moved together for what felt like an age, lost to sensation as Loki was. It could have been minutes or hours and he wouldn’t have been able to say which. He could recount the hitching of Thor’s breath though, or the way his shoulders rounded as he bent down to scrape his teeth against Loki’s collarbone, or the exact span of his waist underneath Loki’s grasping hands. But time? That was lost to him completely under the weight of his brother’s body and that expansive bubble of love that surrounded them.

When Thor spent inside him they both cried out. Gold blazed through them and they were the sky and the rain and all the sleeping animals and roots under the ground, and they were themselves, and they were complete.

“Brother,” Thor ventured a little while later. His voice sounded a bit thick. “Could...I stay here in your tent with you tonight? In case...I need you again.”

“Before the morning?” Loki asked before he could stop himself. It was just a joke, because he did want Thor to stay, but he didn’t quite know why Thor wanted to stay. Thor wasn’t in a joking mood, though.

“You’re right, I’m sorry, I’ll go—”

Thor tried to rise, but Loki stopped him.

“No,” he said. “Stay. Just...just in case.”

If Thor could make thin excuses then Loki could too. Loki snuggled down into the blankets and made room. There wasn’t really enough room anyway, not with Thor’s broad shoulders, but Thor snuggled down too, and Loki scooted closer to him until they were practically lying on top of each other.

He drifted off to sleep with Thor’s fingers playing with the ends of his hair and Thor’s voice murmuring something low and unintelligible in his ear. Part of him just wished he wouldn’t wake up in the morning; this would be the perfect way to go.

*

He woke in the morning to Thor’s voice again, and before any of his words could register and before Loki was fully awake, he found himself rolling over into Thor’s embrace with a sleepy smile and a mumbled good morning.

“Oh,” he said, realizing what he was doing, namely, acting like a lover. His cheeks grew warm. Thor's arms tightened around him, though.

“Do you need me again?” Loki managed to whisper through the tightness in his throat.

His body was still pliant and welcoming from the night before, and it wasn’t long until Thor was seated inside him. They lay on their sides with Thor spooned up behind him, one broad hand on Loki’s chest and the other arm up over their heads. Loki found himself reaching back to dig his fingers into the meat of Thor’s ass, urging him to go faster, and Thor’s name spilling from his lips in breathless sighs. And Thor sucked a bruise onto his neck, and slid his hand down to stroke Loki’s cock in time with his thrusts, and they came together, glowing and transported.

“I love you,” Thor said afterwards, their bodies still stuck together with sweat and spend.

 _Not as much as I love you._ “I know,” Loki said instead.

*

When they emerged from the tent it was to find themselves in a literal paradise. The entire mountain had come alive. The forested slope they had camped on was a blanket of knee high grass, which itself was barely visible for all the flowers that had sprung up, which themselves were barely visible for all the butterflies and bees. The trees were twice the size they had been the day before. Every wild blueberry bush had fruited overnight and the branches hung heavy with fat berries. The air was filled with birdsong.

“I’m going to miss this,” Thor said, surveying his handiwork.

“Pack up your things,” Loki said. “We’re going on one last trip.”

“Where to?”

“It’s a surprise.”

Once they’d broken camp, they went back to the rift they’d discovered the day before.

“I’m going to try something,” Loki said. “Hold very still.”

He closed his eyes and called on his seidr. For a moment he just let it fill him and reveled in the feel of it. Thor might miss his nature explosions, but Loki was definitely going to miss having so much power at his disposal.

Carefully, he constructed a bubble of personal breathable atmosphere for each of them. He made sure they were self sustaining and wouldn’t rely upon ongoing use of his own magic, then set them to cling to their bodies. Then, he reached out for the rift. The fabric of spacetime was bunched a certain way right now, but a little tugging this way, then that way...a little smoothing...the tiniest rotation…

“There,” Loki said, blinking his eyes open. He held out his hand for Thor to take. “Ready?”

In one step they left Midgard and crossed half the universe.

Thor turned to him and grinned.

“This is Delphi IX,” Thor said.

“The last item on my list,” Loki said, shrugging nonchalantly, like he hadn’t just made the most important magical discovery of his life. “The sun only rises here once every century. I hear it’s supposed to be pretty spectacular.”

They were on a vast steppe. The ground sloped away gently underneath their feet to dip down before rising into a mountain range that made up the horizon. Predawn light suffused everything, casting the world in hues of rose and gold. The grass under their feet was short and scrubby, and filled with tightly curled buds.

“That little rise, over there,” Thor said, pointing.

He spread his cloak on the ground and they sat hip to hip. Loki had thought that he might be bereft by this point, wailing and gnashing his teeth, or too stressed out to appreciate what was happening. But a strange sort of peace had claimed him instead. These were their last moments bonded together, and he was simply basking in them.

A buzzing tension filled the air. The land itself was humming with it, readying itself for the return of the sun. Thor put his hand on Loki’s, and Loki turned his palm up to thread their fingers together. Their link resonated. It filled Loki with the sweet yawning ache of closeness that could never quite be close enough, for they would always be two people and not one.

The tension grew until it felt like a palpable thing. It affected Loki too, and his chest twinged in excitement. The sun was coming.

When it finally broke over the horizon, the world sang.

Every bud on the steppe bloomed at once, the flower faces turning towards the light. A flock of birds lifted from the ground to take up half the sky. The flowers released golden swirls into the air, like the land itself had exhaled, and the birds swooped down into the whorls, picking up sparkles on their wings and beaks and carrying them up into the spun sugar clouds.

Loki clutched at his chest with his free hand. He felt their link dissolving.

“Loki,” Thor said, strangled sounding. He squeezed Loki’s hand so tightly it hurt.

Forlornly, Loki turned his witchsight on them. They looked as they ever had before any of this last year had happened. He felt empty, and like he might never be full again.

Part of him had wondered, despite it all, if his end of this whole debacle had been the spell too. If it had inspired a lust in him that wouldn’t normally be there, or at least a willingness to go along with Thor’s. If once the spell was over that maybe this feeling inside of him would go with it and leave him with purely fraternal affection. He hadn’t really thought he’d have that much luck, but a small corner of his heart had hoped for it. It would have been so much easier.

It wasn’t to be, though. The link was gone, and Loki’s feelings remained. And he already missed Thor with an ache so sharp that it felt like a physical wound.

“It’s over,” Loki said dully. “You’re free of me. Congratulations.”

Thor made some kind of noise. Loki couldn’t tell if he was laughing or crying, and he didn’t dare look.

“It should be me saying that,” Thor said.

Loki couldn’t help it. He felt tears prick his eyes, and he couldn’t stop them. He blinked and they spilled down his cheeks, and he took his hand from Thor’s, and wrapped his arms around his knees and cried into them. It was over. It was over.

He felt raindrops on his skin. Thor was crying too.

Loki wanted to disappear. He wanted to sublimate into the air to be dispersed back into the ground by his brother’s tears. Surely he couldn’t survive this. He always thought he’d live fast and die young, but perhaps not quite so soon.

Coming here had been a mistake. He should have just taken them home so that he could be alone when the spell was over. He always had been overly sentimental, though, no matter that he tried to spin it as anything but, and he just hadn’t been able to resist this one last thing. It was his own fault that Thor was here seeing his breakdown now.

“Don’t cry on account of me,” Loki managed. “I’ll be fine.”

“I don’t know if I will be,” Thor said. “I thought...I thought…”

Thor’s words didn’t make sense to him, but Thor wasn’t mocking him, or getting up to demand they leave, and once again Loki couldn’t help himself, and he threw himself against Thor’s chest.

“What will we do?” Thor said, stroking Loki’s hair, his voice rumbling through his chest into Loki’s ear. He sniffled. “I don’t know what to do. Loki, why are you crying? Tell me, please.”

“I can’t,” Loki said, burrowing in deeper. “Don’t make me.”

“I thought you’d be happy,” Thor said. “That you didn’t have to...with me...anymore…”

“Obviously I’m not,” Loki whispered, to himself, under his breath, but maybe Thor heard him because he held him tighter.

The thought of getting up and leaving was utterly intolerable.

“Thor,” Loki said, pulling back just slightly. “You owe me a favor now, right?”

Thor nodded.

_’Get up and leave so I don’t have to.’ ‘Pretend none of this ever happened.’ ‘Electrocute me where I sit.’_

“Give us a kiss? One more for the road?” He just wanted one more. He wasn’t greedy. Just one. He’d memorize it and keep it locked in a little box forever to take out and remember whenever he wanted to. Surely it wasn’t too much to ask.

Thor’s face went through a series of expressions all in a row, too quickly for Loki to name them, before settling on something infinitely tender.

Gently, Thor brushed Loki’s hair behind his ear and let his hand trail down to his neck, his thumb stroking the hinge of Loki’s jaw. Loki held his breath, lips parted. Just one kiss. That’s all he needed.

_Just one kiss and then a lifetime more._

No. One.

“Please,” Loki whispered.

“Brother,” Thor said, his voice unsteady. “What you ask of me...I cannot.”

Loki closed his eyes and felt another tear slip down his cheek. Of course.

“If you ask this of me,” Thor said roughly, “I cannot give you just one. If I kiss you again I won’t be able to stop. Do you understand?”

Loki’s eyes flew open and his heart leapt into his throat.

“No.”

He didn’t. He couldn’t. His brain simply refused to wrap around it.

“Everything I believed was wrong,” Thor said. “Everything that I thought was just the spell… None of it went away. It’s all still there.”

“Do you mean...Thor, speak plainly, _please_.” Loki found himself gripping Thor’s shoulders, digging his fingers in, like they could claw Thor’s words out of him if only Loki squeezed hard enough.

“I’m hoping that I’m not wrong now,” Thor said, “and that last night and this morning, and now your...tears...and the favor you ask of me...that it all means what my heart desperately wishes it to.”

“ _Thor_.”

Thor cradled Loki’s face in both of his hands. “I want to stay with you. I want to be with you. I want it so badly that even if you say no, telling you is worth it because there is the smallest chance that you might say yes.”

“Yes, yes, you idiot, _yes_ —”

The rest of Loki’s words were lost in the collision of Thor’s lips with his own. Oh, Thor was so brave, and Loki was such a coward. Loki had never been happier about it. He was crying again, tears of happiness and the release of pent up stress, and they mingled with the soft warm rain that was still falling.

He had never honestly thought that Thor might possibly feel the same way that he did. It was too absurd to have ever seriously crossed his mind. He didn’t even know if he really believed it right now, but he was going to give it a solid go. Thor was making a fairly persuasive case at the moment.

They lay on Thor’s cloak and loved each other until the sun set.

There was no golden light this time, no flowery show. Just Loki and Thor, and a lifetime of love that finally had a way of expression, and it was perfect.

They talked for hours afterwards, gazing at the stars. Loki admitted to things he never thought he’d say out loud, and he thought he might catch fire from the heat in his cheeks, but Thor returned every embarrassing admission with one of his own until Loki’s heart felt full to bursting. They never stopped touching. For once in Loki’s life, everything felt like it had worked out in a way that brought him happiness.

Of course nothing in his life could be _easy_ , though. Despite how high he was floating right now, he knew that reality would reassert itself shortly, and that reality generally didn’t approve of relationships of an intimate nature with one’s own brother. But right now, he didn’t care. His own brother was kissing him, and caressing him, and saying the sweetest words Loki had ever heard, and just generally making him feel like he was worth even the smallest bit of a damn, and reality could go take a long, long hike and then do something rude to itself.

“We should come back here again to see the next sunrise,” Thor said quite a bit later. Loki was laying with his head on Thor’s shoulder, his hair spread across Thor’s chest in tendrils like the vines that had so often clung to them over the last year. Perhaps that was the secret to all of this after all. Perhaps Thor’s magic had simply found the seeds buried deep in their hearts and coaxed them into life; and the shoots had grown into vines; and the vines crept and twined throughout them until they were inextricably bound together.

“We should,” Loki agreed.

*


End file.
